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When Miami New Times sat down with Florida medical-marijuana advocate and political consultant Ben Pollara earlier this month, Pollara said he wasn’t concerned that Carol Jenkins Barnett, daughter of Publix supermarket-chain founder George Jenkins, had donated $800,000 to a group trying to keep medicinal weed illegal.

“I still think ‘shopping is a pleasure,'” Pollara said, referencing the supermarket chain’s famous slogan.

But it turns out tens of thousands of people don’t quite agree with one of the loudest medical-marijuana advocates in the state. As of Monday morning, more than 41,000 people have signed a Change.org petition demanding that Jenkins Barnett stop using the chain’s profits to “fund [her]political beliefs.”

On Sunday, the Florida Medical Association voted to oppose Amendment 2, Florida’s latest effort to legalize medical marijuana. The FMA, which represents more than 20,000 physicians in the state, also opposed a similar effort two years ago.

So why is the doctor’s group hell-bent against a treatment option that has been embraced elsewhere in the U.S.?  Well, after the vote at the group’s annual meeting in Orlando, CEO Tim Stapleton offered the following (factually dubious) reasoning.

“There is nothing ‘medical’ about this proposal, and the lack of scientific evidence that pot is helpful in treating medical conditions is far from inclusive,” he said, according to a press release sent out by Drug Free Florida, the billionaire-backed campaign to scare people from voting for medical marijuana.

But the FMA neglected to mention one key fact about its vote: Its Orlando conference, held this year in Walt Disney World, was sponsored by PhRMA, one of the pharmaceutical industry’s largest trade organizations. PhRMA has spent millions to defeat medical marijuana proposals across the country.

Attitudes toward medical marijuana are shifting as more states pass laws recognizing it as a form of treatment — not a way to get high. But as Floridians gear up this November to vote on a constitutional amendment that would legalize curative cannabis, it seems that the City of Wilton Manors is scheming to keep it out.

A new ordinance that will go through its first reading at tonight’s commission meeting will place heavy restrictions on business owners looking to obtain a medical marijuana permit. If passed, it will impose a 1,000-foot buffer around daycares, churches, rehab facilities, and schools — leaving only a sliver of available property on the outskirts of town.

Two years ago, a cloud threatened to cast a shadow over the Sunshine State — a cloud of medical marijuana, which would have become legal if Floridians had voted to ratify Amendment 2. Although the measure narrowly failed to clear the 60 percent threshold needed to become law in 2014, Amendment 2 is back on the ballot this year, and the ad campaign against it is back on the air.

Last time, the “No on 2” campaign, bankrolled by Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson, suggested that if medical marijuana were legalized, pot cookies would become “the new face of date rape.” This summer, the no campaign is out with a new round of over-the-top TV spots. New Times Broward Palm Beach ranked the five funniest ones so far in this election cycle.

Florida loves Publix, the supermarket chain routinely ranked the most valuable and beloved company in the whole state thanks in no small part to the fantastically salty sub sandwiches. So it’s sure to jar a few hard-core Publix fans to learn that the family that founded the chain just donated $800,000 to a conservative-led campaign fighting medical marijuana legalization.

State election records show that the Carol Jenkins Barnett Family Trust donated $800,000 July 14 to Drug Free Florida, the lobbying group running a scare-tactics campaign to kill Florida’s medical marijuana amendments. The same group helped squash 2014’s medical marijuana amendment, which fell just two percentage points short of the 60 percent vote it needed to pass statewide.

Florida’s anti-pot lobby is back. And just like in 2014, it’s spreading straight-up lies about medical marijuana to try to frighten voters. Two years ago, Amendment 2 netted 58 percent of the vote — just short of the 60 percent it needed to pass.

That result likely had something to do with Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson’s scare campaign to shut the amendment down: Adelson spent more than $5 million to help fund the Drug Free Florida Committee, an anti-pot political action committee and PR campaign.

Now, with another medical marijuana amendment on the ballot this November, the Drug Free Florida Committee is back, but minus Adelson’s largesse so far. This time, Mel Sembler, a former U.S. ambassador and major Mitt Romney donor, is the money man behind the push.

Last week, Drug Free Florida sent New Times one of its first mass mailers — and it is extremely silly. The list, titled “The Top 10 Reasons to Vote NO on Amendment 2,” is chockfull of factual inaccuracies and half-truths straight out of the film Reefer Madness.

We debunked them so you don’t have to do it yourself.

Jay Scott, sporting a brown ponytail and a shirt that exposes his tattoos, walks through Habatat Galleries in West Palm Beach, past Dale Chihuly’s fluorescent, coral-like cylinders and William Morris’ display of ancient tools. The 39-year-old weaves among pieces created by some of the world’s most renowned glass artists and then stops at the back of the store. Then he picks up a spiky blue alien sculpture.

His partner Lindsey, who inherited the gallery from her retired parents in 2009, flashes a coy smile as Jay twirls the $20,000 piece, revealing its bright colors and elaborate workmanship. But this one is different. It’s “functional,” Jay says.

In other words, it’s a bong. And Scott is far from the only South Florida glassblower making a killing in the luxury bong market.

Richard DeLisi, sentenced to three consecutive 30-year terms, or 90 years, for a marijuana importation conviction in 1989, will remain incarcerated. Judge Michael E. Raiden denied a motion requesting a review of his sentence last week. DeLisi has spent the past 26 years behind bars for a nonviolent offense that has a normal guideline sentence range of 12 to 17 years.

Rick Scott can’t stop thinking about pee.

A federal judge told him to drop the plan. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals told him it was illegal. Then the U.S. Supreme Court refused to listen to his arguments. Even the facts are against him (the program wastes more money than it would ever “save”).
But despite losing over and over in every court around, Gov. Rick Scott is still fighting for the right to force state employees to pee in a cup. And the legal bills for his quixotic quest are now inching toward a cool million bucks — funded, of course, by taxpayers.

Florida For Care, the group that put together a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Committee to dictate regulatory standards had the medical marijuana amendment passed back in November, is hosting a couple of conferences they’ve dubbed “The Future of Medical Marijuana in Florida.”
With Amendment 2 defeated in the polls in November, the group is moving forward to start, as they put it, “strategizing and planning in advance of Florida’s Legislative Session.”
The next legislative session is scheduled for March.

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