Marijuana Legalization Policy

Florida’s Department of State said Sunday that none of the 22 active citizen-initiated constitutional amendments — including a high-profile measure to legalize recreational marijuana for adults — met the legal requirements to appear on the November 2026 ballot by the signature deadline. State records on Monday showed the Smart & Safe Florida marijuana campaign roughly 100,000 valid signatures short of the 880,062 needed, though the group insists the secretary of state’s declaration is premature and says its 1.4 million submitted petitions will ultimately be enough once counties finish validating them. The failure of every initiative comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis used state money and his political machine to defeat earlier 2024 marijuana and abortion measures and then signed a 2023 law that raised costs and hurdles for citizen ballot campaigns, changes critics warned would make grassroots amendments nearly impossible. Those new barriers have already pushed a Medicaid expansion campaign to delay its effort until 2028, signaling that voters’ long-used workaround to bypass Florida’s GOP‑dominated legislature on issues like minimum wage, felon voting rights and now marijuana is being choked off. The clash over signatures and the new rules sets up likely legal and political fights over whether DeSantis and Republican leaders have effectively shut down one of the last remaining pressure valves in Florida politics.