Florida's Governor is sounding off about "radical" citizens initiatives approved to be on the ballot by the Supreme Court he selected.
Gov. Ron DeSantis isn't holding back when it comes to initiatives that could legalize adult-use cannabis and that could enshrine reproductive rights, repealing an abortion law that will ban the procedure after six weeks of gestation that takes effect next month.
"Once voters figure out how radical both of those are, they're going to fail. They are very, very extreme," DeSantis said in Davie.
Regarding the Adult Personal Use of Marijuana citizen initiative, which could expand the current retail model beyond medical necessity and allow visitors to the state and residents without qualifying conditions access to the product, the Governor offered blunt criticisms, suggesting voters would smoke out the allegedly misleading language on November's ballot.
"Look at the weed one. For example, the weed one is not just decriminalized, it's basically a license to have it anywhere you want. So no time, place and manner restrictions," DeSantis contended, again misrepresenting the language in the citizens' initiative. The Legislature would be permitted to enact laws consistent with the amendment, according to the language of the proposal.
As he has before, the Governor warned that increased access to the herb via Amendment 3 would cause Florida to "start to smell like marijuana in our cities and towns" and "reduce the quality of life."
"Do we want to have more marijuana in our communities?"
If passed, people could hold three ounces of flower and up to five grams of concentrate.
Regarding the Floridians Protecting Freedom push to enshrine adult reproductive rights in the Constitution by prohibiting any law limiting the ability to obtain an abortion before fetal viability or in the case of maternal health necessity (Amendment 4 on the ballot), the Governor likewise cast aspersions on the "California abortion" measure.
Even in the wake of the state's Heartbeat Protection Act being signed last year, as a presidential candidate, DeSantis suggested that when it came to state abortion laws, different strokes moved the world for "liberal" states like New Hampshire. But he doesn't think Florida voters will in the end move to strike statist control of reproductive rights or cannabis consumption.
"I think Florida voters over the past, you know, four or five cycles have developed a skepticism on the amendments generally because they're always written in ways that are confusing, you don't necessarily know what the intent is going to be. So I think that there's a certain segment of voters, they default, just vote no on these things because they know that these things, these things cost tens of millions of dollars to get on," DeSantis said.
"So somebody is paying for that and somebody is going to benefit from that," added DeSantis, who raised more than $81 million in surplus campaign funds in 2022 that got transferred to a federal super PAC the following year, which ended up spending $168 million on a campaign that competed in one state and won zero of its 99 counties.
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