Major setback for Florida adult-use marijuana legalization campaign

The marijuana multistate operator-funded effort to legalize adult-use cannabis in Florida suffered a major blow on Friday when a state judge ruled more than 200,000 signatures invalid.

The decision jeopardizes Smart & Safe Florida’s effort to put legalization back on the ballot and is a big win for the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a longtime opponent of legal cannabis that moved to disqualify the signatures.

According to the Tallahassee Democrat, the ruling by Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper erases roughly one-third of the 675,307 signatures collected and submitted by the campaign.

A spokesperson for Smart & Safe said the campaign will appeal the ruling.

But if it stands, the campaign now faces a significant challenge to gather the total of 880,000 signatures required ahead of a Feb. 1 deadline.

Will Florida legalize adult-use marijuana in 2026?

The setback comes after the state had previously acknowledged that the Smart & Safe legalization campaign had collected enough valid signatures to trigger a review process.

That came only after a separate lawsuit, filed by Smart & Safe, alleged the DeSantis administration was deliberately sabotaging the process.

Cooper’s ruling came in a lawsuit challenging an October state Division of Elections directive that ordered local authorities to reject petitions that did not include the proposed legalization amendment’s full text.

The state claimed Smart & Safe Florida used an unapproved form by adding a link to its website on the back of the petition, which was otherwise identical to the state-approved version with a blank back page.

Ben Gibson, an attorney with Shutts & Bowen representing Secretary of State Cord Byrd, said during a Friday hearing that “signatures obtained on an unapproved form cannot be counted.”

Cooper agreed, stating that adding text to the back of the petition constituted a “material change” to the approved layout.

“If one is not using the forms prescribed by the secretary of state, then they are not valid,” Cooper said.

Serious challenge for Trulieve-funded legalization push

The setback may be the most serious one yet for the effort to legalize adult-use cannabis in Florida.

Nearly all of Smart & Safe’s $25.8 million in funding to date comes from Tallahassee-based MSO Trulieve Cannabis Corp., according to campaign finance records.

Trulieve also funded the Nov. 2024 constitutional amendment that received backing from Donald Trump. Though it received majority support, it fell short of the 60% threshold required to become law.

According to Glenn Burhans, an attorney representing Smart & Safe, the campaign must realistically submit signatures a month before the Feb. 1 deadline to allow for verification.

With a new state law that took effect in July that required the full amendment text on petitions pausing signature processing for 90 days, the pressure is mounting.