Florida Department of Children and Families
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ political action committees have struggled to raise money to defeat a cannabis legalization ballot measure, the GOP executive is being accused of a new tactic—the use of taxpayer dollars instead.
Most recently, a 30-second TV ad released on Oct. 28 warns about the “deadly dangers of marijuana,” with Colorado mother Laura Stack pointing to “marijuana-induced psychosis” as the cause of her 19-year-old son Johnny’s death—ruled a suicide—in 2019.
“I lost my son due to marijuana,” Stack said in the Florida commercial. “But it’s not too late for your teen.”
This taxpayer-funded public service announcement (PSA) is just one in a series of many ahead of the Nov. 5 election, when Floridians will cast their ballots on Amendment 3, a constitutional measure to legalize cannabis for adults 21 years and older. The PSA was sponsored by the Florida Department of Health, the Florida Department of Children and Family, and the Florida Department of Education.
Specifically, the Florida Department of Education is the sixth state agency that DeSantis has pulled into a roughly $20-million, taxpayer-funded campaign in opposition to cannabis and abortion, Seeking Rents reported.
Roughly $4 million for this campaign came from an opioid-related settlement that’s supposed to be allocated toward opioid-use prevention—not anti-cannabis advertisements—the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Kim Rivers, CEO of Tallahassee-based medical cannabis company Trulieve, said on Oct. 25 that the use of taxpayer dollars in this fashion is undemocratic.
“The ‘Free’ State of Florida is beginning to feel a lot more like Communist China with the government using millions of Taxpayer Dollars and money earmarked to combat the opioid crisis to fund state-sponsored propaganda couched as Public Service Announcements against a CITIZEN ballot initiative to legalize marijuana that oh, by the way, is proven to reduce opioid use,” Rivers wrote on X. “What happened to LESS Government and letting adults be adults—we don’t want you telling us what to do in our homes, what or who to vote for, and we damn sure don’t want you doing it with OUR taxpayer money!”
Trulieve represents the primary financial muscle behind the Amendment 3 legalization campaign with more than $141 million contributed as of Oct. 24, according to the Florida Division of Elections.
The nearly $150 million in total raised in support of Amendment 3 casts a 5-to-1 shadow on the $30 million raised by the two anti-legalization political action committees—Keep Florida Clean Inc. and Florid Freedom Fund—chaired by DeSantis’ chief of staff, James Uthmeier.
These political funds aren’t in question but rather the governor’s use of taxpayer dollars to fund PSAs related to political issues that are on the statewide ballot.
In addition to the three departments mentioned above, the Florida Department of Transportation also ran a TV ad in opposition to cannabis on Oct. 17, with a trio of Republican Florida sheriffs warning of impaired driving, youth emergency room visits and domestic abuse they claim are tied to cannabis. Two other state agencies have also targeted abortion.
“There’s too many kids going to the ER because of weed gummies and joints laced with fentanyl,” Sheriff T.K. Waters, of Duval County, said in the Oct. 17 commercial.
Waters did not mention that state-regulated cannabis industries require child-proof packaging and laboratory testing for products to help ensure consumer safety—two safeguards that are not enforced in the unlicensed marketplace.
While the governor’s PSAs don’t explicitly mention Amendment 3 (cannabis) or Amendment 4 (abortion), the timing of these campaigns in the days leading up to the election violates Florida law banning the use of taxpayer funds on political ads, according to attorney John Morgan, the founder of personal injury law firm Morgan & Morgan.
Motivated by his younger brother, Tim, who sustained a spinal cord injury while working as a lifeguard at Disney World that left him paralyzed, Morgan played a key financial and influential role in pushing Florida’s medical cannabis legalization initiative across the finish line in the November 2016 election. He now supports Amendment 3 for adult-use legalization.
“What troubles me today and what brings us here today is that … the opponents of Amendment 3 are now using taxpayer money that was supposed to be designated for opioid rehabilitation [and studies]. That taxpayer money, your money, my money, our money, is being used to combat Amendment 3,” Morgan said Oct. 25 in a virtual news conference.
Morgan was joined by Republican state Sen. Joe Gruters and Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo in calling for DeSantis to cease using taxpayer funds for advertisements related to cannabis and abortion leading up to the election.
Gruters, the former chair of the Florida Republican Party in Florida, said has been an outspoken supporter of Amendment 3 and an outspoken critic of Amendment 4.
“But no matter where you stand on an issue, this is still a democracy, and in a democracy, we do not spend taxpayer dollars in advance of a political issue,” he said. “Tax dollars are meant to be spent on our police, schools, roads and other public programs that make our state great. Not political agendas.”
Pizzo, meanwhile, pointed to the separation of powers among the three branches of government.
“The taxpayer dollars of Florida that are generated [and] form our revenue, those dollars are to be gatekept and protected and preserved and allocated through appropriations,” he said. “That is the exclusive purview of the Legislature. The governor certainly has the power to veto—and does every year—but where the original and the genesis of the intention and the direction of those dollars are to go comes from a very deliberate process in the Legislature that we vet, and we do so as our fiduciary obligation to taxpayers.”
In other words, Pizzo said, multiple state agencies have misappropriated tax funds that were marked for other uses and instead violated state law by taking a nonobjective, influencing position on political issues that voters should be able to research and decide for themselves.
Pizzo filed a lawsuit for an injunction against the Florida Department of Transportation earlier this month—not seeking criminal penalties but rather to halt the use of tax dollars for the PSAs—but Leon County Circuit Court Judge Angela Dempsey tossed the suit last week.
“We just wanted the conduct to stop,” Pizzo said during the virtual news conference on Oct. 25.
With a Colorado mom attempting to influence Floridians’ views on cannabis through a taxpayer-funded TV advertisement that was released on Oct. 28, however, that conduct remains ongoing eight days out from the election.
H/T: www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com
