Speaking At Police Event, DeSantis Falsely Claims That Most In Colorado ‘Regret’ Legalizing Marijuana

Speaking at a police event this week in opposition to a marijuana legalization ballot measure, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said that most people in Colorado regret legalizing marijuana—despite recent polling results showing otherwise.

“It has been tried,” DeSantis said during remarks at a Florida Sheriffs’ Association conference on Tuesday, referencing Colorado, California and New York, all of which have legal and regulated adult-use marijuana markets.

He insisted that in Colorado, “most people there regret that it happened.”

That claim is, however, false, at least according to a survey in April from the Colorado Polling Institute. Nearly a decade after voters approved one of the nation’s first adult-use marijuana laws, more than two thirds (67 percent) of registered voters in Colorado said they see the reform, known as Amendment 64, as a positive change for the state.

A separate recent survey conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) found that more than 7 in 10 (71 percent) Colorado voters think cannabis should be legal and regulated similarly to alcohol, while less than a quarter of respondents (23 percent) said they believe cannabis should be prohibited.

The results indicate that people in Colorado have become even more supportive of legalization since 55 percent of voters approved the reform on the ballot in 2012.

In his remarks this week, DeSantis also repeated other hyperbolic claims he’s previously made about the legalization ballot measure, known as Amendment 3, that’s set to go before Florida voters in November.

Watch DeSantis’ marijuana comments, starting around 11:55 into the video below:

“Marijuana use is going to be a broader right than your First Amendment right to free speech, your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms—I mean, it’s ridiculous,” said the governor, who holds a Harvard law degree. “It’s not going to be good for law and order. It’s not going to be good for quality of life.”

The governor said he has “credibility” on the issue because he helped implement the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law. But legalizing cannabis for all adults, he said, goes too far.

As he’s said in the past, the governor claimed the reform would mean that many parts of Florida would smell like marijuana, including restaurants and other public places. And he predicted that law enforcement “is not going to just want to deal with it at all.”

The campaign behind the measure, Smart and Safe Florida, said in a statement to Marijuana Moment that marijuana “is already here in Florida, but in a dangerous form often laced with unwanted harmful chemicals.”

“Amendment 3 is really about choosing freedom and safety over arrests and dangerous products,” said Morgan Hill, a campaign spokesperson. “Legalizing recreational adult use marijuana means giving Floridians access to tested, safe products instead of marijuana with dangerous chemicals, pesticides and fentanyl that is too common in the illicit market. It also means ending arrests for simple marijuana possession, giving Floridians the same individual freedoms that more than half of Americans already enjoy.”

DeSantis in his remarks also repeated the claim that the main corporate backer of the ballot measure, the medical marijuana company Trulieve, is a Canadian firm.

“It is basically an attempt by a Canadian marijuana company to use the Florida constitution to give them an ability to have almost a monopoly on selling marijuana,” he said.

Trulieve has called the assertion that it’s Canadian “completely and totally untrue.”

“Trulieve was founded in Florida by native Floridians almost 10 years ago and has grown from a startup to an industry leader, creating thousands of jobs in Florida and serving hundreds of thousands of customers in Florida,” Steve Vancore told Marijuana Moment last week after DeSantis made a similar claim.

Vancore further called it “absolutely untrue” that the proposal would create, as DeSantis has said, “a limitless constitutional right to possess and smoke.”

“The clear terms and limits are outlined in the actual ballot language including the ability of Florida lawmakers to enact restrictions on when and where someone can smoke,” he said. “Both the actual language of the amendment and the rest of the Florida Constitution clearly and unequivocally give Florida lawmakers to do the same thing they currently do for alcohol and tobacco consumption.”

Luke Niforatos, of the prohibitionist group Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), also spoke against the legalization proposal at this week’s law enforcement conference in Orlando.

Enjoyed speaking with the @FLSheriffs today alongside Gov. @RonDeSantis opposing Measure 3 in Florida. Grateful that he has used his position – much like our co-founder @PJK4brainhealth – to oppose marijuana legalization, which would harm the next generation of Floridians! pic.twitter.com/DINW8nrtQo

— Luke Niforatos (@LukeNiforatos) July 23, 2024

SAM has also come out strongly against the federal government’s proposed move of marijuana to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), with leaders saying at a webinar last month that they’re weighing “all legal options” to challenge the plan.

The Florida Republican Party formally came out against Amendment 3 in May.

Earlier this month, news broke that DeSantis’s so-called “Florida Freedom Fund” received a $100,000 donation from the cannabis company group POB Ventures in order to help defeat the marijuana and abortion proposals. That amount was nearly ten times what the campaign had raised in total at the beginning of July.

In an exclusive interview with Marijuana Moment, the CEO of POB Ventures, Patrick O’Brien, said he’s not against adult-use cannabis legalization in principle—but is instead troubled by the specific language of the ballot initiative because it provides an option, rather than a mandate, for regulators to approve additional licenses.

Suspicions about the motivations behind the contribution to DeSantis’s PAC aren’t likely to dissolve, especially amid new reporting from CBS News Miami that unnamed hemp businesses have joined forces to back DeSantis in his fight against the legalization measure, with a pledge to contribute $5 million collectively to the state Republican Party after the governor vetoed the bill that ostensibly would have wiped out the market by banning most consumable cannabinoid products.

It’s been previously reported that the governor is hoping to garner support for his efforts to defeat the marijuana legalization initiative from the state’s hemp industry. DeSantis seemed to concede last month that his veto of a bill to ban most consumable hemp-derived cannabinoids was at least partly because he hoped the market would aid in his anti-legalization campaign.

The DeSantis campaign committee, even with the recent contributions, is still miles behind the legalization campaign, Smart & Safe Florida, in terms of fundraising. The legalization effort has raised over $60 million since launching in late 2022.

DeSantis has been railing against the marijuana measure for months—most recently arguing that it would protect the right to use cannabis more strongly than the First Amendment protects free speech or the Second Amendment protects gun rights—and again claiming that the reform has been a “failed experiment” in states such as Colorado.

The governor said last month that the proposal would allow people to “do marijuana wherever you want—just smoke it, take it, and it would turn Florida into San Francisco or Chicago or some of these places.”

DeSantis also claimed last month that that if voters approve the marijuana legalization initiative, people “will be able to bring 20 joints to an elementary school”—and he again complained about the prevalent odor of cannabis that he says would result from the reform.

Legalization has “not worked in any single place,” the governor said, and he challenged a recent ad from the campaign that promoted regulating cannabis as an alternative to the status quo of people using untested cannabis from illicit sellers.

Meanwhile, according to a Fox News poll released last month, two in three Florida voters support the cannabis initiative—with the issue proving more popular than the governor himself. The survey showed majority support for legalization across the political spectrum, too.

The governor has consistently argued that the state shouldn’t go beyond the existing medical cannabis program and that broader reform would negatively impact the quality of life for Floridians. The Florida Republican Party also formally came out against Amendment 3 last month.

Smart & Safe Florida separately announced in March that it was working to form a coalition of veterans to build voter support for the reform, and the campaign has since formally launched that initiative.

Here’s what the Smart & Safe Florida marijuana legalization initiative would accomplish:

• Adults 21 and older could purchase and possess up to three ounces of cannabis for personal use. The cap for marijuana concentrates would be five grams.
• Medical cannabis dispensaries could “acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use.”
• The legislature would be authorized—but not required—to approve additional entities that are not currently licensed cannabis dispensaries.
• The initiative specifies that nothing in the proposal prevents the legislature from “enacting laws that are consistent with this amendment.”
• The amendment further clarifies that nothing about the proposal “changes federal law,” which seems to be an effort to avoid past legal challenges about misleading ballot language.
• There are no provisions for home cultivation, expungement of prior records or social equity.
• The measure would take effect six months following approval by voters.

Here’s the full text of the ballot title and summary: