| John Morgan from XXXX.com |
Florida attorney John Morgan has been the voice and wallet of the (so far) very successful campaign to legalize medical cannabis in his state. And while getting patients access to medical cannabis is the mission right now, the 63-year-old says his generation is ready to outright legalize it.
“We are at a tipping point with marijuana in this country and usually when things start to tip, it turns into an avalanche,” Morgan tells the Tampa Bay Times in an extended Q&A session. “I know for a fact that someday when we look back on all the money spent on making it a crime and sending people to jail and all the people whose careers were over because they got arrested for it and then couldn’t get into med school or law school, we’re going to say, ‘What were we doing?'”
He says that his generation has smoked farm more pot than any generation before or after (which we highly, and we mean highly, doubt), and that their usage resulted in much more tolerance toward the plant. “We’ve been around it our whole lives and we’ve never been judged about it – even if we never smoked it, it’s no big deal.”
He says the “Just Say No”-era Greatest Generation didn’t understand cannabis and never had the exposure that children of the 60s and 70s have had.
“[Morgan’s generation] had friends in college who smoked who are now neurosurgeons — and president of the United States,” he said. “We all know people who have smoked who are doing tremendous things in society.”
Passing medical marijuana in Florida will be a good indicator of how far Baby Boomers have come in his state. Morgan says it will be a “landslide”, mostly because it’s a no-brainer.
“People who are 65 to 70 . . . or anyone who has had a loved one in a chemo ward or watched them suffer in any way,” he said. “They don’t give a damn if marijuana is legal or not if it can provide some relief.”
Recent polls show that reaching that 60 percent mark might not be hard at all. A University of North Florida study released this week pegged the pro-vote somewhere around 74 percent – down from 82 percent back in November of 2013.
Florida is currently a pretty awful state when it comes to pot laws. You can get a year in jail and $1,000 fines for 20 grams or less, and more than that is a felony with $5,000 and 5 years. Cultivation of less than 25 plants is a 5-year felony as well.
Florida’s medical marijuana ballot will be decided in the general election in November.