Supporters of an embattled ballot measure to create a constitutional amendment in Florida allowing for medical cannabis say they have enough signatures to qualify for the ballot this November.
Ben Pollara, who is heading up the People for United Medical Marijuana campaign, says that the campaign will hit one million signatures sometime next week – hundreds of thousands more than the 683,000 valid signatures required by state law.
The state says that so far there are about 265,000 valid signatures turned in by the group and there are hundreds of thousands more being certified and processed by each individual county’s election offices.
Meanwhile, the Florida Supreme Court is still considering whether to allow it on the ballot if the votes indeed are validated. Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi sued to stop the measure from moving forward, claiming the language is too vague and that the bill would open the floodgates for outright legal marijuana Armageddon, or something like that. And Florida just can’t have that on Bondi’s watch.
Pollara says the signature gathering is truly just the first step in what will likely be an expensive, grueling campaign. He estimates that his group will spend close to $10 million in advertising and marketing.
We’re a big state. We have a lot of media markets. They’re going to be expensive, given the governor’s race,” Pollara tells the Washington Post.
Polling has shown that as much as 82 percent of Floridians approve of medical cannabis use and want to see it legalized.