Amendment 3 is about money, not marijuana

OPINION

BY LEN CABRERA

Amendment 3 will modify Article X, Section 29 of the Florida Constitution to purportedly establish a right to the personal use of marijuana by adults under the state constitution. What it does not do is change federal law prohibiting the cultivation, distribution, and possession of marijuana. (There is a federal rule pending to reduce marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III control.) It also does not allow the personal sale or manufacture of marijuana, guaranteeing massive profits for the politically-connected companies who get a government license to grow and sell marijuana, and an omission in the amended language may mean that smoking marijuana in public places cannot be prohibited. More importantly, the amendment grants criminal and civil liability protection to Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers and other licensed entities.

You can read the full text of the amendment here. The ballot summary bellow is all that most people will see:

Ballot Summary: Allows adults 21 years or older to possess, purchase, or use marijuana products and marijuana accessories for non-medical personal consumption by smoking, ingestion, or otherwise; allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute such products and accessories. Applies to Florida law; does not change, or immunize violations of, federal law. Establishes possession limits for personal use. Allows consistent legislation. Defines terms. Provides effective date.

Liability protection for users and licensees

There are some notable items in the amendment text that are omitted from the ballot summary, most importantly the liability protection for marijuana users, Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other licensed entities. From the amendment text (new additions to the Medical Marijuana section of the Florida Constitution; bold emphasis added):

(4) The non-medical personal use of marijuana products and marijuana accessories by an adult, as defined below, in compliance with this section is not subject to any criminal or civil liability or sanctions under Florida Law.

(5) Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other entities licensed as provided below, are allowed to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use upon the Effective Date provided below. A Medical Marijuana Treatment Center, or other state licensed entity, including its agents and employees, acting in accordance with this section as it relates to acquiring, cultivating, processing, manufacturing, selling, and distributing marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use shall not be subject to criminal or civil liability or sanctions under Florida law.

So a Medical Marijuana Treatment Center could sell you a bag of oregano and might be able to get away with it. Worse, they could sell contaminated products that actually poison their customers and there could potentially be no recourse. The existing language for Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers states that there is no liability for these entities as long as they are “in compliance with this section and Department regulations,” but the added language for personal use only states that these entities must be “acting in accordance with this section”; Department regulations are not mentioned in that new language.

Clearly, nobody learned from the mistake of blanket immunity granted by the 2001 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act (H.R. 748) or the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (H.R.5546). Then again, the company behind the funding for Amendment 3 probably does understand the benefits.

Amendment 3 does not allow Floridians to grow marijuana at home

Another important omission is that Amendment 3 only allows individuals to possess, purchase, or use marijuana. There are no provisions for private growing or selling, not even home-growing for personal use. Growing and selling are reserved to the Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers that are already licensed by the state. The amendment language allows the legislature to “provide for the licensure of entities that are not Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers” (paragraph (e)), but until the legislature acts, the existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers have exclusive access to the personal marijuana market.

That explains why $83 million of the $90 million raised by the Smart & Safe Florida political committee comes from a single company: Trulieve. In 2021, Trulieve spent $2.2 billion to purchase Harvest Health & Recreation, an early marijuana license holder with connections to then-Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.

“There are no inmates serving time exclusively for possessing 20 grams or less of marijuana”

Despite the obvious flaws, Amendment 3 is promoted on individual freedom grounds and some mythical idea that it will lead to fewer incarcerations. If it really was about freedom, why are private individuals not allowed to grow or sell marijuana? The amendment doesn’t dissolve the Domestic Marijuana Eradication (DME) Program, a joint federal and state system to enforce the legalized marijuana cartel in Florida by the “detection, dismantling and eradication of domestically grown marijuana.”

On August 30, State Senator Joe Gruters (R, D-22) posted on X that Amendment 3 would “end needless arrests and incarcerations of adults for simple possession of marijuana.” That is a political talking point that has no basis in reality. In a letter published in the Tampa Bay Times on August 12, Ricky D. Dixon, Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections, wrote, “There are no inmates serving time exclusively for possessing 20 grams or less of marijuana” (emphasis added) because state law prohibits incarceration in state prison for a charge of possession of 20 grams or less without other charges. (A subscription-free summary of the letter is published in The Floridian.)

What about Alachua County? Between January 1 and September 10, 2024, Alachua County law enforcement agencies booked 4,790 people into the county jail. Of those, only 615 (12.8%) had a drug charge of some kind (with or without other charges), 232 (4.8%) had only had drug charge(s), and only 7 (0.15%) had a single charge of marijuana possession under 20 grams. All seven had those charges dropped, and, in fact, the cases have disappeared from the court system. Our jails are not full of people arrested for simple possession of marijuana.

Amendment 3 would allow marijuana smoking in public places, including around children

In addition, there is strong disagreement about whether the legislature could regulate public smoking of marijuana, including inside buildings, in parks, on beaches, and around children. Proponents of Amendment 3 argue that the amendment allows for this regulation, but the authors somehow neglected to add personal use to the constitutional provision that currently allows for the regulation of medical marijuana in public places:

(6) Nothing in this section shall require any accommodation of any on-site medical use of marijuana in any correctional institution or detention facility or place of education or employment, or of smoking medical marijuana in any public place. – Florida Constitution, Section 29 (c)(6) (emphasis added)

If the amendment writers weren’t so focused on their money grabbing and liability protection and wanted the legislature to be able to regulate public smoking of marijuana, they could easily have deleted the world “medical” in the existing constitutional provision. They didn’t.

Vote no on Amendment 3

Amendment 3 is not some libertarian fantasy to decriminalize marijuana. It’s a blatant attempt by politically-connected corporate interests with government licenses to expand their market, protect the barriers to entry, and enact criminal and civil liability protection to ensure massive profits. We recommend voting no.