After a pro-cannabis Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., withdrew himself from consideration as Donald Trump’s next attorney general on Nov. 21, it took the president-elect just hours to pick a new candidate for the position: former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.
A loyalist, Bondi spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2016 before Trump’s first term in the White House, when she accused then-President Barack Obama of ignoring “laws he doesn’t like,” and when she pointed to the sign-holding crowd in Cleveland and said, “Lock her up, I love that,” referring to then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
A Florida native, Bondi served as the top law enforcement official in the Sunshine State from 2011 to 2019 under former Gov. Rick Scott, who now serves in the U.S. Senate.
“Pam was a prosecutor for nearly 20 years, where she was very tough on Violent Criminals, and made the streets safe for Florida Families,” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social. “Then, as Florida’s first female Attorney General, she worked to stop the trafficking of deadly drugs, and reduce the tragedy of Fentanyl Overdose Deaths, which have destroyed many families across our Country. She did such an incredible job, that I asked her to serve on our Opioid and Drug Abuse Commission during my first Term—We saved many lives!”
After prescription opioid overdose deaths peaked at 17,029 during Trump’s first year in the Oval Office in 2017, the number of deaths declined to 14,139 by 2019, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
During Bondi’s eight years as Florida’s attorney general, state lawmakers approved a high-CBD, low-THC medical cannabis law in 2014. That same year, Bondi opposed a constitutional ballot amendment that aimed to more broadly legalize medical cannabis, calling the wording of the measure “misleading.”
“The proposal hides the fact that the amendment would make Florida one of the most lenient medical-marijuana states,” Bondi said in a December 2013 Florida Supreme Court briefing, the Tampa Bay Times reported that year.
At that juncture of the nation’s legalization movement, 20 states had elected to reform their laws to allow medical cannabis programs with broad patient access.
After the Florida Supreme Court OK’d the measure’s language to appear on the ballot, voters came up short of the 60% supermajority threshold needed for passage with 58% supporting the amendment at the polls.
While Bondi opposed the ballot language for the 2014 measure, so did Gaetz, who served as a state representative in the Florida House at the time. Although Gaetz supported medical cannabis at the time, saying, “I don’t want government standing between parents and the care they need for their children,” he didn’t support the loosely defined specifics of the 2014 amendment, The Gainesville Sun reported.
Similarly, Gaetz—whose pro-cannabis record includes sponsoring 2017 legislation to federally reschedule cannabis, introducing 2019 legislation to prevent federal interference in state-sanctioned programs, and voting in favor of 2022 legislation to fully deschedule cannabis—opposed Florida’s 2024 adult-use legalization measure that failed earlier this month with 56% of voters coming short of that 60% supermajority threshold. Gaetz’s opposition stemmed from his position that cannabis legalization shouldn’t be resolved in a state constitution.
Tallahassee-based Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers, whose cannabis company bankrolled the 2024 adult-use cannabis legalization attempt with nearly $145 million in contributions toward the campaign, still came out in congratulatory support of Gaetz’s presumable attorney general nomination last week.
Likewise, Rivers defended Trump’s choice for Bondi this week, despite Bondi’s not-so-promising cannabis record in Florida.
Specifically, Bondi worked to keep in place Florida’s smokable flower ban that Scott (Florida’s former governor) enacted following 71% of Florida voters passing a 2016 constitutional amendment to legalize the state’s high-THC medical cannabis program that exists today.
In August 2018, Bondi filed a brief in support of the state’s ban on smokable cannabis, challenging a circuit court judge’s ruling that the ban was unconstitutional. “Time and again during debate, elected members of Florida’s Legislature emphasized that the amendment is exclusively about medicine and that smoking is antithetical to good medicine,” Bondi wrote.
“To be fair, she was following the governor’s direction on that at the time, in that role,” Trulieve’s Rivers said this week on X. “I think she is a great pick!”
H/T: www.cannabisbusinesstimes.com
