If FL Supreme Court approves cannabis ballot language, will voters go for recreational weed or not?

The long wait on whether Floridians will get a chance to vote to legalize recreational cannabis for adults 21 and older is almost over, as the Florida Supreme Court is on a hard deadline to rule on the proposed constitutional amendment’s ballot language within days.

The high court must “render their written opinion no later than April 1” regarding any initiative petition, according to Article IV, section 10 of the Florida Constitution.

One interested observer – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – predicted earlier this year that the high court will approve the ballot language.

“I think the court is going to approve that,” DeSantis said at a campaign event in New Hampshire in January, according to Marijuana Moment, “so it’ll be on the ballot.” (DeSantis has suspended his presidential campaign.)

The governor earlier in March criticized the proposal, saying that the measure had the “broadest language I’ve ever seen.”

“It seems to supersede any other regulatory regime that we have,” DeSantis complained.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody has been the top opponent of the measure. Her office told the Florida Supreme Court last year in a legal filing that the measure “misleads voters in several key respects.” The Florida Chamber of Commerce and the Drug Free America Foundation also filed legal briefs attempting to block the proposal from making it on the ballot.

But both critics and opponents of the measure think it’s likely that the court – stacked with DeSantis appointees — will approve the ballot language this time around, based on the tone of the oral arguments when the issue came before the court last November — after having rejected a similar proposal twice in 2021, ruling in both cases that the ballot language was misleading.

“I cannot fathom why the Florida Supreme Court would side with Attorney General Ashley Moody when her team made such a poor showing during their arguments,” says Chris Cano, the executive director of Suncoast NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws). “So much so, that even the most conservative of justices chided the state’s counsel for misrepresenting the justices’ own words in previous cases in an attempt to strike down the adult-use initiative.”

[Read more at Florida Phoenix]