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 donations and volunteers, she found herself overwhelmed by unforeseen barriers from the state that have made it almost impossible for citizens to amend the state constitution from a grassroots level.
Barnhart withdrew the petition in late November 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 percent 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 medical marijuana program. That's why, she says, it's so important to legalize home-grow.She predicts that with the approval of recreational marijuana, dispensaries will prioritize products with higher THC levels over products with lower THC levels or products infused with THC and CBD that are geared toward medical cannabis patients. She points to states like Oregon, California, and Colorado, all of which legalized 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 personalized as possible," Barnhart maintains, and, what's more, the market isn't nearly big enough to pose a threat to commercial cannabis giants. "Large corporations cannot accommodate 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 diagnosed 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," recounts Barnhart, who cofounded the nonprofit Cannamoms in 2013 to educate people on the medical benefits of cannabis. "She woke up hungry and thirsty the next morning. Most importantly, she quickly regained her enjoyment of life and her will to live. Within days, she started walking, talking, laughing, and playing again. I absolutely believe cannabis saved her life."
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."Florida is the anti-freedom state when it comes to cannabis," she says. "Remember all that talk from DeSantis about 'medical freedom' during the pandemic? He has always been against medical freedom when it comes to cannabis."
Indeed, earlier this year, DeSantis signed a bill forbidding sober-living facilities from allowing 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 opposed legalized cannabis in any form, inspiring Floridians to seek the citizen initiative route to legalize medical marijuana in 2016. The measure passed with 71.3 percent of voters in favor.
But the medical marijuana citizen initiative likely wouldn't have reached the ballot under today's stringent guidelines, which Republicans rammed through the legislature after a successful 2018 citizen initiative that granted felons the right to vote.
Subsequent legislation increased the number of signatures required for a petition to qualify for judicial review, made it more cumbersome and costly for sponsors to employ paid signature collectors, and easier for opponents to challenge signatures, and narrowed the timeframe within which signatures remain valid.
And as Barnhart's accounting and administrative fees mounted and donations lagged, WISE & Free Florida found itself in debt. Realizing 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 additional costs," Barnhart says.
"Now, billion-dollar companies and conglomerates are the only people who can have a say in Florida law," she says of the current state of affairs. That said, she hopes Trulieve or another company will sponsor a home-grow initiative for 2026 as a gesture of goodwill to the cannabis-consuming community.
Steve Vancore, a spokesperson for Trulieve, says that's not out of the question.
"The near-term focus for Trulieve is supporting passage and implementation of the Smart & Safe Florida initiative," Vancore writes in an email to New Times.
But he adds, "Trulieve has supported home-grow initiatives in Florida in the past and expects they will continue to do so in the future."
