DAVIE, Fla. – Gov. Ron DeSantis said he’s against a proposed constitutional amendment that would make recreational marijuana legal in Florida.
One of the main reasons he’s against it? The smell.
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“It’s basically a license to have it anywhere you want. No time, place, and manner restrictions. This state will start to smell like marijuana in our cities and towns, it will reduce the quality of life,” DeSantis said at a Thursday news conference in South Florida.
DeSantis noted that he supported the implementation of medical marijuana use in the state when he became governor. In fact, it was the very first bill DeSantis signed into law as governor. He said the people of Florida have the medical marijuana option now and questioned if there needs to be more availability of the drug.
“I go to every part of Florida, not just South Florida, I see marijuana stores. We have medical marijuana in this state that has been approved and I implemented it. They hadn’t implemented it before I became governor, I implemented it and satisfied the intent, but do we really need to do more with that? Do we want to have more marijuana in our communities? I don’t think it’ll work out well, but it is a very, very broad amendment,” DeSantis said.
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DeSantis called the marijuana amendment, as well as a proposed amendment that would protect abortion rights, “extreme.”
“So I think as voters see that, and I think Florida voters over the past, you know, four or five cycles have developed a skepticism on these amendments generally, because they’re always written in ways that are confusing, you don’t necessarily know what the intent is going to be. So I think that there’s a certain segment of voters they default, just vote no on these things. Because they know that these things cost 10s of millions of dollars to get on so somebody’s paying for that and somebody’s gonna benefit from that,” DeSantis said.
Florida’s Supreme Court justices voted 5-2 to allow on the ballot a measure that would allow companies which already grow and sell medical marijuana to sell it to adults over 21 for any reason. The ballot measure also would make possession of marijuana for personal use legal.
The measure would need to be approved by 60% of voters in November to become law.
