Florida Lawmakers Approve Bill Making It Harder To Put Initiatives On Ballot As Marijuana Legalization Campaign Pursues 2026 Effort

Florida Republican lawmakers are working to impose significant restrictions on the ability to put initiatives on the ballot—a plan that could impair efforts to let voters decide on marijuana legalization next year.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)—who strongly advocated against a 2024 legalization proposal that ultimately failed to achieve a steep 60 percent vote threshold—pitched the idea to lawmakers, calling for changes to the petition gathering process that threaten to further complicate citizen-led reform efforts for a range of issues.

On Thursday, legislators took up that call, with the House Government Operations Subcommittee advancing a bill from Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka (R) that would, among other things, require petitioners to post a $1 million bond before commencing signature gathering, prohibit the use of out-of-state petitioners and narrow the window in which signatures must be handed over to election officials, among other changes.

“The process has been taken over by out of state fraudsters looking to make a quick buck and by special interests’ intent on buying their way into our Constitution,” Persons-Mulicka argued at the hearing. “The bill seeks to root out the problem and provide assurances that only those with a stake in our Constitution can change it to that end.”

Opponents say the legislation, which is now headed to the full House State Affairs Committee, would have a chilling effect on citizen-led ballot efforts, making it even more cost-prohibitive and leaving campaigns with greater liabilities as it concerns signature gathering.

For marijuana reform stakeholders and advocates, the proposal amounts to government overreach. DeSantis and other key Republicans have made their skepticism clear about having voters decide on constitutional amendments in the first place, and the last several legalization ballot initiatives were challenged by state officials.

Last year’s marijuana proposal did receive a strong majority of the vote, but Florida’s 60 percent requirement for constitutional amendments ultimately made the latest push unsuccessful. That’s despite tens of millions of dollars coming into the Smart & Safe Florida campaign, including from major cannabis companies—primarily the multi-state operator Trulieve.

To add more restrictions on the petitioning process—which under Persons-Mulicka’s bill would also include increased fines for election law violations and a system allowing voters to retract their signatures from petition forms—could make Smart & Safe’s 2026 legalization push all the more challenging.

Asked by Marijuana Moment about the potential impact of the bill on the campaign, a Smart & Safe Florida spokesperson declined to comment.

Similar legislation sponsored by Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R) has also been filed in the Senate.

While the House bill’s sponsor didn’t explicitly say that the proposal is responsive to any particular issue, arguments about the need to change the process were frequently heard in the run-up to last year’s election in Florida, when both marijuana and abortion rights were on the ballot.

Under the new bill, signatures collected before enactment would not be subjected to the revised restrictions. Smart & Safe Florida has so far submitted just over 7,100 valid signatures of the 891,523 needed to make the 2026 ballot with its latest version of the legalization initiative, according to the Florida Division of Elections.

The campaign’s 2026 iteration includes several changes that seem responsive to issues raised by critics about the 2024 version, which was endorsed by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail.

For example, there’s new clarifying language prohibiting the sale of marijuana products that are marketed in a way that might be appealing to children.

It further explicitly states that nothing in the measure would “prohibit the legislature from providing for the home growing of marijuana by adults for their personal use and the reasonable regulation thereof.” That clarification may assuage concerns from certain advocates who criticized the lack of a home grow option in the original proposal.

The initiative would also make it so medical marijuana operators that have been licensed as of January 1, 2025 would be able to start providing for adult-use sales starting on the effective date.

Another nuance in the new proposal concerns licensure for businesses that want to enter the space in the future. Some worried that the prior version could effectively create a monopoly benefitting the existing medical marijuana operators alone because it simply said the legislature wasn’t prohibited from allowing additional licenses, without a mandate to actually take up that issue.

Last month, a survey from the University of North Florida found that, despite last year’s ballot proposal failing, there’s overwhelming bipartisan voter support for the reform. It showed that 67 percent of Florida voters now back legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans.

The results conflict with another recent poll from the Florida Chamber of Commerce, a proactive opponent of legalization, that found majority support for the reform among likely voter (53 percent) but not enough to be enacted under the 60 percent requirement.

Meanwhile, the governor said in January that the latest version of the legalization initiative is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting it will be blocked from going before voters next year.

“There’s a lot of different perspectives on on marijuana,” DeSantis said. “It should not be in our Constitution. If you feel strongly about it, you have elections for the legislature. Go back candidates that you believe will be able to deliver what your vision is on that.”

“But when you put these things in the Constitution—and I think, I mean, the way they wrote, there’s all kinds of things going on in here. I think it’s going to have big time trouble getting through the Florida Supreme Court,” he said.

Last year, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney general. It’s not entirely clear why he feels this version would face a different outcome.

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Separately, a Florida GOP senator claimed recently that the legalization campaign “tricked” Trump into supporting the 2024 measure by misleading him and the general public about key provisions.

Ahead of the election, Trump said in September that he felt Amendment 3 was “going to be very good” for the state.

Before making the comments, Trump met with the CEO of Trulieve, Kim Rivers, as well as with a GOP state senator who is in favor of the reform.

While Trump endorsed the Florida cannabis initiative—as well as federal rescheduling and industry banking access—he has since been silent on cannabis issues. And his cabinet choices have mixed records on marijuana policy.

Ohio GOP Lawmaker Files Bill To Revise Voter-Approved Marijuana Law With Less Sweeping Changes Than Senate-Passed Measure

Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.

The post Florida Lawmakers Approve Bill Making It Harder To Put Initiatives On Ballot As Marijuana Legalization Campaign Pursues 2026 Effort appeared first on Marijuana Moment.