5 December 28, 2023 - January 3, 2024 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com New Times | Contents | Letters | news | night+Day | CuLture | Cafe | MusiC | miaminewtimes.com MIAMI NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | RIPTIDE | METRO | NIGHT+DAY | STAGE | ART | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | SNUFFED OUT Florida’s home-grow marijuana initiative is dead. BY CARLOS MILLER A Florida citizen initia- tive that proposed to allow medical mari- juana patients to grow their own cannabis has died after failing to gather enough signa- tures to qualify for the 2024 gen- eral election ballot. The initiative’s sponsor says it is a casualty of new laws passed by Florida Republican legislators that make it harder for citizens to amend the state constitution. “The legislators keep making it harder for us to pass constitutional amendments so that giant conglomerates and large corporations are able to accomplish what they want, but we’re not,” says Moriah Barnhart, a longtime cannabis activist who launched the group WISE & Free Florida in December 2022 to place the issue on the ballot. But with scant cash and no volunteers, she found herself overwhelmed by unforeseen barriers from the state that have made it al- most impossible for citizens to amend the state constitution from a grassroots level. Barnhart withdrew the petition in late No- vember after her group was able to raise only $4,000. That’s not nearly enough to cover the cost of attorneys, accountants, organizers, managers, and petition circulators, not to mention tighter time constraints and late fees Republican legislators enacted in 2019. Meanwhile, a citizen initiative to legalize recreational marijuana backed by nearly $40 million from Trulieve, the largest cannabis dispensary in the state, gathered more than a million verified signatures — far more than the 891,523 required to put it on the ballot. The recreational marijuana initiative is under review by the Florida Supreme Court, which has rejected similar initiatives on legal technicalities in previous years but appears likely to approve this one. If authorized, the citizen initiative would need to amass 60 per- cent of the vote to pass. The Case for Legalizing Home-Grow in Florida Barnhart fears recreational marijuana will lead to phasing out the state’s existing medi- cal marijuana program. That’s why, she says, it’s so important to legalize home-grow. She predicts that with the approval of rec- reational marijuana, dispensaries will priori- tize products with higher THC levels over products with lower THC levels or products infused with THC and CBD that are geared toward medical cannabis pa- tients. She points to states like Ore- gon, California, and Colorado, all of which legal- ized medical marijuana years before legalizing recreational marijuana and have now seen a reduction in medical marijuana products available for retail. Those states, however, allow citizens to grow their own cannabis, enabling medical marijuana patients to produce the strains and terpene profiles that address their specific medical needs. “We need botanical medicines to be as per- sonalized as possible,” Barnhart maintains, and, what’s more, the market isn’t nearly big enough to pose a threat to commercial canna- bis giants. “Large corporations cannot accom- modate that, and they are not going to lose money from small, vulnerable demographics of people who need personalized medicine and choose to grow their own cannabis.” Barnhart became a cannabis activist 13 years ago after her daughter, Dahlia, was di- agnosed with brain cancer. Though Dahlia was given little chance of survival, Barnhart says cannabis changed her daughter’s quality of life and has kept her alive. “She started on cannabis about six months into her treatment for aggressive brain cancer and she slept through the night for the first time in her entire life that first night,” re- counts Barnhart, who cofounded the non- profit Cannamoms in 2013 to educate people on the medical benefits of cannabis. Welcome to Florida, the “Anti-Freedom State” Barnhart finds it ironic to see Gov. Ron DeSantis tout Florida as the “citadel of freedom” when she has experienced the complete opposite. “Remember all that talk from DeSantis about ‘medical freedom’ during the pan- demic? He has always been against medical freedom when it comes to cannabis,” she says. Indeed, earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill forbidding sober-living facilities from al- lowing residents to possess or use medical marijuana — under a doctor’s recommendation and per state law — despite studies that show cannabis may help treat opioid addiction. DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott, also op- posed legalized cannabis in any form, inspiring Floridians to seek the citizen initiative route to legalize medical marijuana in 2016. The mea- sure passed with 71.3 percent of voters in favor. But the medical marijuana citizen initia- tive likely wouldn’t have reached the ballot under today’s stringent guidelines, which Re- publicans rammed through the legislature af- ter a successful 2018 citizen initiative that granted felons the right to vote. Subsequent legislation increased the num- ber of signatures required for a petition to qualify for judicial review, made it more cum- bersome and costly for sponsors to employ paid signature collectors, and easier for oppo- nents to challenge signatures, and narrowed the timeframe within which signatures re- main valid. And as Barnhart’s accounting and admin- istrative fees mounted and donations lagged, WISE & Free Florida found itself in debt. Re- alizing it was a lost cause, she withdrew the petition. “When we could foresee being charged for late petitions in the millions, I couldn’t risk being personally accountable for those fees — especially since donations weren’t coming in to match the expenditures, much less addi- tional costs,” Barnhart says. She hopes Trulieve or another company will sponsor a home-grow initiative for 2026 as a gesture of goodwill to the cannabis-con- suming community. Steve Vancore, a spokesperson for Tru- lieve, says that’s not out of the question. “The near-term focus for Trulieve is sup- porting passage and implementation of the Smart & Safe Florida initiative,” Vancore writes in an email to New Times. [email protected] New laws by Florida Republican legislators have killed the petition to allow medical marijuana patients to grow their own cannabis. Photo by Elsa Olofsson/Flickr | METRO | “LEGISLATORS KEEP MAKING IT HARDER FOR US TO PASS CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS.”
