An effort to get marijuana legalization back on the ballot in Florida in 2026, after a measure was narrowly defeated in 2024, has some voters excited. But many legalization advocates are disappointed by the specifics of the proposal. Elected Republicans are meanwhile taking the whole thing to the state Supreme Court, hoping to have it struck down before it can go any further.
The measure, organized by Smart & Safe Florida, aims to legalize “adult personal use of marijuana.” It would allow adults over 21 to possess and purchase cannabis. Possession would be limited to 2 ounces of flower product or 5 grams of concentrate. Certain activities, like driving under the influence and “marketing and packaging attractive to children,” would remain banned. The measure would not create protections for employees who use marijuana, nor for renters whose landlords forbid use in their homes.
Further limitations include the measure’s complete lack of social equity provisions.
The licensing plan is another sticking point for some. The measure would license existing medical marijuana businesses in Florida to sell adult-use marijuana. This would give them “first-mover” advantage over startups in the new market, though the measure also “Provides for creation of licenses for non-medical marijuana businesses.” Smart & Safe Florida has been funded by medical marijuana companies including Trulieve, a multi-state operator and Florida’s biggest; its 2024 ballot measure was criticized by some advocates as “monopolistic” and “hostile to small businesses.”
“It’s hard to support [the current initiative]; you have to look at the lesser of two evils.”
If approved by voters, legalization would take effect on May 1, 2027. But other details of what it would look like aren’t spelled out by the initiative’s text, and would be left up to state lawmakers and regulators. The many questions for them would include whether people are permitted to grow cannabis at home, and how cannabis tax dollars would be used.
“It’s hard to support [the current initiative]; you have to look at the lesser of two evils,” Christopher Carlos Cano told Filter. A United States Air Force veteran, Cano is a public policy coordinator for the SEIU union and founder of the Suncoast NORML chapter in Florida.
“The greater evil being [criminalization] of cannabis,” he said, “but the tradeoff is allowing the existing Big Cannabis cartels to corner the market and have a vertically integrated system that shuts out businesses and entrepreneurship.”
To Cano, the current initiative is a step backwards from 2024. “It is no different than the previous measure, except it’s more restrictive,” he said. “It institutes a [public] smoking ban in the language and feels like the campaign is trying to placate an element in Florida’s [politics] that would never support this in the first place. Now they’ve opened up the possibility this won’t make it to the ballot by not passing Supreme Court review.”
In 2025, Smart & Safe Florida said it collected over one million voter signatures in support of placing legalization on the ballot. In October, after election officials did not approve a chunk of the signatures, the campaign sued, alleging the state was unlawfully trying to delay the measure. The secretary of state had verified over 662,000 signatures, more than triple the statutory minimum to qualify for the ballot.
Then in December, after the election board had agreed to move the measure forward, State Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) challenged it in the Florida Supreme Court, requesting a review of its constitutionality.
“Polling routinely shows that most Americans oppose the smell of marijuana in public,” Uthmeier said, and the summary language would “deceive Florida parents.”
On January 2, Uthmeier and parties including the Drug Free America Foundation, Florida Chamber of Commerce and a former appeals court judge filed briefs in opposition to the Smart and Safe measure. Uthmeier called the measure “fatally flawed,” as Marijuana Moment reported, saying it “misleads voters in a way designed to garner greater approval, is flatly invalid under the federal Constitution, and violates the single-subject requirement. The Court should therefore strike the proposed amendment from the ballot.”
The court set a January 12 deadline for Smart & Safe to respond, and January 20 for the AG and other parties to respond again.
Uthmeier’s argument in part focuses on public smoking. The measure’s summary says it “Prohibits smoking and vaping in public.” But the full text concerns “public places” that are owned or operated by government and state entities, leaving any further bans up to the legislature.
“After all, polling routinely shows that most Americans oppose the smell of marijuana ‘in public,’” Uthmeier said, and the summary language would “deceive Florida parents into thinking this initiative will prohibit marijuana smoking near their children in hotels, restaurants, sports venues, and other areas open to the general public.”
For over a decade, Florida has been a hotly contested battleground in marijuana reform. As the third most populous state, it’s a tantalizing prize for legalization advocates. But the state’s rightward shift in recent years has complicated the picture. Republicans led by Governor Ron DeSantis have entrenched conservative leadership that poses major political, legal and even cultural opposition.
Cano is familiar with how Florida Republicans refuse to compromise and will try anything to prevent reform. He noted a 2025 scandal where Florida seemingly negotiated a $67 million settlement with a pharmacy benefit manager; it involved a $10 million donation to a nonprofit run by the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, and that money was used to fund opposition to marijuana legalization in 2024.
“Depending on what county you’re in and your color, it means the difference between getting a ticket or going to jail.”
Florida’s unique electoral law also poses a big challenge: The state requires a 60 percent threshold for a citizen-led initiative to pass. This sees measures failing to become law despite winning a majority of votes—like Amendment 2 to legalize medical marijuana in 2014, which lost with over 57 percent support; or 2024’s Amendment 3 to legalize adult use, which lost with nearly 56 percent support (despite the blessing of Donald Trump during his reelection campaign).
Florida voters approved medical cannabis in 2016 with 71 percent support, but past efforts to advance adult-use have included defeats in 2021 and 2022, when ballot initiatives were killed by the state Supreme Court.
As prohibition continues, Cano is acutely aware of the ongoing burden of marijuana arrests and criminal proceedings. There has been some progress, as several jurisdictions have decriminalized low-level possession. But many Florida police departments don’t even report arrests to the FBI, making it unclear how severe criminalization remains in other cities.
“It happens every single day,” Cano said. “Depending on what county you’re in and your color, it means the difference between getting a ticket or going to jail. Florida has some of the most draconian possession limits for cannabis—anything over 20 grams is a felony. You could have under an ounce of weed and be facing five years in prison.”
Many minor marijuana arrests, he added, result in people taking plea deals and being put through the drug court system to get charges dropped.
“There were a couple areas that were concerning for constituents in 2024, one being having a pathway for homegrown, and I think the new initiative allows the legislature to have a pathway without making it mandatory.”
In this context, Roz McCarthy feels that the current initiative has tried to strike a balance in response to voter concerns about the 2024 measure. Based in Orlando, she was inspired to learn more about medical cannabis by her mother’s death from cancer and her son’s ongoing experience with sickle cell disease. In 2016 she founded Minorities for Medical Marijuana. While not directly involved in sponsoring the 2024 measure, her organization did endorse it, and assisted with outreach and education, especially to Black residents and other voters of color.
“I think there were a couple areas that were concerning for constituents in Florida,” she told Filter, “one being having a pathway for homegrown, and I think the new ballot initiative allows the legislature to have a pathway without making it mandatory.”
“It should not be attractive to children,” McCarthy added. “Wherever you can’t smoke tobacco, you should not be allowed to smoke cannabis. So those are some of the things that were added in the language for 2026 that were a positive.” If the Smart & Safe measure is cleared for the November ballot, she is considering doing similar outreach to support its passage.
A February 2025 poll by the University of North Florida found that 67 percent of Florida voters supported legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Independents and 55 percent of Republicans. Despite Florida’s highly partisan politics, McCarthy believes marijuana can cut across party lines.
“We’re going to fight for equity, but we also are hamstrung. That is going to be a big hurdle that we have to get over.”
“There’s a lot of education that’s needed across the board and there’s different factions,” she said. “I do believe that there’s some Republicans … who support freedom of choice… There is a high [proportion] of counties that lean Republican, and we know that these are constituents who are also proud medical card-holders.”
The current measure has no social equity provisions, which many marijuana-legal states have enacted. These vary, but usually involve some requirements that certain business licenses be reserved for people with former marijuana arrests, impacted by poverty or from impacted communities; training and education to help applicants understand the rules; and some form of financial support. Such laws respond to concerns that Black and other people of color are excluded from the legal industry, and that legalization privileges larger companies over small businesses.
McCarthy recognizes the importance of social equity, but also the reality that it will be an uphill climb in a state whose governor has made it the central goal of his political career to destroy policies related to equity or other “woke” priorities.
“Equity in Florida for this industry is something that should be a priority,” she said. “We have a state that has deemed some of the initiatives for equity, diversity and inclusion as not being needed and not being supported… We’re going to fight for equity, but we also are hamstrung. That is going to be a big hurdle that we have to get over.”
Photograph (cropped) by manish panghal on Unsplash