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The long-awaited meetings between suspended Cannabis Control Commission Chairwoman Shannon O’Brien and Treasurer Deborah Goldberg will not take place as scheduled Wednesday and Thursday, Goldberg’s office said Tuesday afternoon.
“Chair O’Brien’s attorneys have informed us that due to unforeseen circumstances, they are unable to attend the meetings scheduled for April 10 and 11. They again have requested a postponement and we have agreed,” Goldberg spokesman Andrew Napolitano said in a statement. “We have been attempting to meet with the Chair since September and we hope to avoid further delays in scheduling the meetings.”
A spokesman for O’Brien was not immediately available Tuesday afternoon.
The Cannabist Network
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Trulieve, the state’s largest medical-marijuana company, has contributed nearly $50 million to the effort to pass a constitutional amendment to authorize recreational marijuana in Florida, according to a new campaign-finance report posted on the state Division of Elections website.
The Quincy-based company pumped $9.225 million into the Smart & Safe Florida political committee from Jan. 1 to March 31, the report shows.
The Florida Supreme Court on April 1 gave approval for the proposed constitutional amendment, Amendment 3, to appear on the November ballot. Until last month, Trulieve had largely been the sole financial supporter of the effort.
Much of the Trulieve money went toward the expensive process of collecting and verifying petition signatures to qualify for the ballot. But the new report showed a handful of the state’s other medical-marijuana operators contributed to the committee days before the Supreme Court ruling.
Verano Holdings Corp., which operates as MÜV in Florida, contributed a total of $2.225 million between March 27 and March 29. Curaleaf Inc. made two $1 million contributions — one on March 27 and another on March 31. AYR Wellness Inc. and Green Thumb Industries each contributed $500,000 on March 26, and Cresco Labs contributed $400,000 on March 22.
As of March 31, the committee had raised nearly $55 million since the launch of the campaign in 2022, and had spent $40.6 million. Florida voters in 2016 approved a constitutional amendment that broadly allowed medical marijuana.
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Metro Times
Adult-use dispensaries have yet to pop up in Ohio. This week, a handful of rules for how they should operate were sent to a state board for review.
Even Gov. Mike DeWine called the whole contradiction “goofy“: Ohioans can now, since Issue 2 went into effect in early December, grow and smoke a relatively small amount of marijuana legally.
Yet, there’s literally nowhere for them to buy it. (Again, legally.)
After passing with 57 percent of the vote last summer, Ohio became the 24th state to legalize weed for adult use. Though the Ohio Senate scrambled soon after Ohioans began, presumably, lighting up, a persistent legislative gap has led to a slew of unanswered questions as dispensaries new and old prepare to open up doors to regular, bud-seeking citizens.
On Wednesday, following this four-month legal gap, about a dozen proposed rules for how the state regulates the soon-to-be adult-use dispensaries were sent through DeWine’s Common Sense Initiative, a board that scrutinizes statewide laws and regulations impacting businesses.
As stated in a draft form of the rule sheet, the newly-formed Division of Cannabis Control, the ivory tower for all legal weed transactions, will oversee 13 areas of regulation that, the document suggests, are copied from or influenced by other legal states.
“Other state cannabis markets and regulations were studied,” it reads, “and identified best practices were used to help develop these rules.”
With the DCC allocating a portion of legal sales into a fund benefiting persons that have long dealt with the brunt of the justice system, big questions abound regarding how fairness in a juicy, nascent market in Ohio will fare with free-market capitalism. And, of course, how the state and local law enforcement will balance preventing potential harm—to minors, per se—and allowing green Ohioans their joie de vivre after years of fearing legal repercussions. And jail time.
In New York last month, Gov. Kathy Hochul called the state’s sluggish legal weed rollout a “disaster,” following a slew of lawsuits from hundreds of dispensary prospectors claiming New York’s Office of Cannabis Management awarded its flimsy 109 licenses, out of 7,000 total applications, with bias.
And just on Monday, Germany became the next country in the European Union to legalize weed, despite criticism that limiting access to “not-for-profit clubs” was too stifling. Ironically, as in Ohio, it’s still illegal to buy and sell.
Mark Oprea
At a weed conference at the I-X Center last year. Ohio may be bound for some of the rollout issues other states are seeing, like in New York, where lawsuits claiming bias in the licensing system abound.
In Ohio, the 13 rules proposed are comprehensive in their security precautions and their tracking of kindbud throughout every single step of the sales process. (And even its disposal out back.) Here are some highlights:
And with that, enjoy lighting up this summer at the dispensary nearest you. When it opens. If it opens.
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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Florida Supreme Court issued rulings Monday allowing the state’s voters to decide whether to protect abortion rights and legalize recreational use of marijuana, rejecting the state attorney general’s arguments that the measures should be kept off the November ballot.
ABORTION RIGHTS
The proposed amendment would protect the right to an abortion after the state in back-to-back years passed tougher restrictions currently being challenged in court. Republican Attorney General Ashley Moody argued that the proposed amendment is deceptive and that voters won’t realize just how far it will expand access to the procedure.
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Florida Supreme Court justices on Monday approved ballot language for a constitutional amendment that will ask Floridians in November whether they want to legalize recreational cannabis for adults 21 years or older.
The measure must get 60% approval to become law, which is the highest threshold for any ballot measure to be passed in the nation.
The official ballot summary as written “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,” and allows Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities “to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell and distribute such products and accessories.”
The proposed amendment had been fiercely opposed by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, who claimed in a legal filing last year that the initiative “misleads voters in several key aspects.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis, who predicted in January that the court would put the proposal on the ballot, recently criticized the measure as having “the broadest language I’ve ever seen.”
The Florida Supreme Court is the final decision-maker determining whether a proposed constitutional amendment makes it on the ballot. Once a measure gathers enough signatures to qualify, the court is charged with determining that the language that will appear on the ballot is clear and limited to a single subject. It can reject measures that don’t meet legal standards, which happened in 2021 when a proposed constitutional amendment regarding the legalization of recreational cannabis came before the Supreme Court.
The 60% approval by voters may not be easy. A Florida Chamber of Commerce poll released in January found that 57% of Florida voters support legalizing recreational cannabis. But that wouldn’t pass. However, a University of North Florida survey conducted on November 30 of last year showed that 67% support the proposal.
Florida has had medical marijuana since 2016, when more than 71% of voters approved a constitutional amendment to make that legal.
Currently, 24 states have legalized recreational weed. They are: Alaska, California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, Minnesota, Missouri, Illinois, Michigan, Virginia, Ohio, Maryland, Delaware, New York, Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
The campaign to get the measure on the ballot has been led by the Smart & Safe Florida political committee. It has spent more than $40 million to date to get more than a million valid signatures to qualify for the Supreme Court review (which this year was 891,523 signatures). Nearly all of Smart & Safe’s funding came from Trulieve, one of the country’s largest multi-state cannabis operators.
This story will be updated.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Diane Rado for questions: [email protected]. Follow Florida Phoenix on Facebook and Twitter.
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