Take heed, Florida pols. Even Trumpy states just legalized weed | Fred Grimm
Deep in Trump country, voters debunked the notion that legalized marijuana was some 1970s hippy-dippy fantasy moldering on the far fringe of lefty politics. On Nov. 3, electorates in red states like South Dakota, Montana — even Mississippi for heaven’s sake — said yes to pot.
Florida’s pols should take heed.
On the bitterest election day in modern American history, cannabis referendums proved to be untethered to our riven politics. Very blue New Jersey approved an “adult-use” initiative for recreational marijuana (by 67 percent). No big surprise there. So did purple Arizona. So did Trumpy South Dakota and Montana. Wasn’t close anywhere. No recounts needed.
For me, the stunner was Mississippi, a bastion of Old South tobacco-spit conservatism. I lived there in the late 1960s, when a single joint could put a fellow in the infamous hellhole Parchman Prison. I wouldn’t have thought back then that five decades would be enough to soften those attitudes. Yet, 74 percent of Mississippi voters (compared to Trump’s 60 percent) just approved a medical marijuana initiative, flouting the opposition of the Republican power structure.
Two days before the election, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reed warned in a tweet, “Experts say it would mean the most liberal weed rules in the US! Pot shops everywhere.” Reed called its supporters “stoners.”
Stoners prevailed. The initiative received 300,169 more votes than Reed had managed in his 2019 gubernatorial run. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have now legalized or at least de-criminalized recreational marijuana. Thirty-six states, including Florida and D.C., allow medicinal uses.
Advocates couch medical marijuana as a humanitarian issue, a safer alternative than the addicting, sometimes deadly opioids prescribed for chronic pain. Recreational pot has been a trickier sell. The prevailing argument – other than the stupidity of ruining lives and clogging up the criminal justice system with pot smokers – has had to do with potential new tax revenues. (The “why not let folks have a good time” factor usually goes unmentioned. Same reason, beer ads refrain from boasting about the buzz.)
Sadly, tax collections in some of the recreational pot states have failed to meet over-optimistic projections. Legislators discovered that if they overtax marijuana, buyers simply revert to copping their weed from illicit sources: a lesson in conservative market principles.
But Florida has something most states lack, a giant marketplace that (until the pandemic) includes 133 million visitors a year — looking for a good time and willing to pay for it.
We already whack tourists with resort taxes, car rental taxes, state and local sales taxes, not to mention the tenth-highest gasoline tax in the country. Add a tax on marijuana to the bill; maybe they’ll be too stoned to notice.
Embodying the spirit of marijuana’s new bi-partisan appeal, Democrat state Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith and Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes are sponsoring House and Senate versions of a bill that would legalize the sale of recreational marijuana and then tax the hell out of it. Similar legislation stalled in the 2020 legislative session, but they figure a projected $5.4 billion deficit might make weed suddenly seem less evil.
Smith told the Sun Sentinel, “We can cut funding for health care, public schools, transportation or housing, or we can find new revenue opportunities and put all sources on the table, including legalizing cannabis for adult use.
“We all know it is going to happen eventually,” the Orlando legislator said. “Why not be proactive?”
“Not while I’m governor,” Ron DeSantis told reporters last year. That, however, was before the pandemic ravaged state tax collections.
A group called “Make It Legal” hopes to circumvent political opposition in Tallahassee with a constitutional amendment on the 2022 ballot that would allow adults to possess of up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana.
Attorney General Ashley Moody, killjoy that she is, has asked the Florida Supreme Court to keep the measure off the ballot, or else the Republican hierarchy will be shown to be wildly out of sync with the Florida electorate.
In 2016, the state’s medical marijuana initiative received 71 percent of the vote (and 1,901,033 more votes than Donald Trump.) Last fall, a University of North Florida poll found 64 percent of Floridians supported legalizing recreational marijuana. (With 32 percent opposed and five percent undecided.) A national Gallup Poll released this month found 68 percent of Americans favored legalization.
Stuck in social isolation since March and in sore need of a pleasant distraction, there’s no doubt how Floridians would vote on a recreational marijuana amendment. If given a chance, stoners would prevail.
Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @grimm_fred
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