Florida’s marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on the November ballot still enjoys strong majority support, according to a new poll from the opposition campaign.

The consulting firm that conducted the survey on behalf of the recently formed “Vote No On 3” campaign said in a memo that, despite the measure’s backing by a supermajority of likely voters, the findings are nonetheless encouraging because opposition grew slightly since February, from 22 percent to 27 percent. At the same time, support stands at 64 percent—a one percentage point dip during the same time period but still more than enough for passage.

Ryan Tyson, president of the firm Tyson Group, nonetheless said that “we are in a strong position to defeat Amendment 3” in the memo obtained by Florida Politics. “Even though millions have been spent to boost it in recent months, support for the amendment is stuck in the mid and its opposition has grown.”

“We expect to see the ceiling of support for the amendment decrease in the weeks ahead as we ramp up our effort to defeat Amendment 3 with messages that our recent data shows can move the needle with the key coalitions that will decide this campaign,” he said.

To that point, the memo also notes that, after providing respondents with arguments in favor and against the proposal, support fell to 57 percent, which would be under the 60 percent threshold needed to pass a constitutional amendment at the ballot. That said, the two-page document doesn’t include those arguments or language of the polling questions.

In any case, the memo that’s set to be circulated to donors on Wednesday makes much of the idea that the well-funded legalization campaign has not meaningfully increased its gains in the past four months, despite putting millions into ads.

“This is not where proponents of the amendment wanted to find themselves with just over three months until Election Day after spending nearly $5 million on television ads in multiple major markets across the state unanswered,” it says.

It should be noted, however, that 64 percent support for a state marijuana legalization ballot initiative is significant. Whether it holds is uncertain, but states from California and Ohio have approved legalization measures with smaller margins (57 percent in each).

The opposition consulting firm argued, however, that ballot initiative campaigns typically aim to be at least 10 percent over the required support needed for passage because as Election Day approaches, voters “start questioning it.”

“That’s exactly what’s happening with Amendment 3 in Florida this election year,” the memo claims. “Not only are the supports of Amendment 3 entering traditional campaign season at a historical disadvantage, they wasted valuable time and money pushing arguments that don’t hold up with Floridians.”

“If we’re able to get the infusion of resources we need in the coming weeks to go on offense and further educate the electorate on all the flaws in the bad plan that is Amendment 3, it will continue to bleed support and we will be victorious,” it said.

The memo is being released about a week after the governor again lashed out against Amendment 3 at the Republican National Convention, making hyperbolic claims about what the reform would allow—claims backers say are “absolutely untrue.”

DeSantis called the proposed constitutional amendment “limitless,” arguing that it would establish a right to marijuana that would be more fundamental than First Amendment or Second Amendment protections for free speech and guns, respectively.

Speaking at a police event earlier this week, DeSantis falsely claimed that most Colorado voters “regret” approving marijuana legalization. In fact, recent polling shows that the reform continues to enjoy strong support there.

The Florida Republican Party, meanwhile, formally came out against Amendment 3 in May.

Earlier this month, news broke that DeSantis’s so-called “Florida Freedom Fund” received a $100,000 donation from the cannabis company group POB Ventures in order to help defeat the marijuana and abortion proposals. That amount was nearly ten times what the campaign had raised in total at the beginning of July.

In an exclusive interview with Marijuana Moment, the CEO of POB Ventures, Patrick O’Brien, said he’s not against adult-use cannabis legalization in principle—but is instead troubled by the specific language of the ballot initiative because it provides an option, rather than a mandate, for regulators to approve additional licenses.

Suspicions about the motivations behind the contribution to DeSantis’s PAC aren’t likely to dissolve, especially amid new reporting from CBS News Miami that unnamed hemp businesses have joined forces to back DeSantis in his fight against the legalization measure, with a pledge to contribute $5 million collectively to the state Republican Party after the governor vetoed the bill that ostensibly would have wiped out the market by banning most consumable cannabinoid products.

It’s been previously reported that the governor is hoping to garner support for his efforts to defeat the marijuana legalization initiative from the state’s hemp industry. DeSantis seemed to concede last month that his veto of a bill to ban most consumable hemp-derived cannabinoids was at least partly because he hoped the market would aid in his anti-legalization campaign.

The DeSantis campaign committee, even with the recent contributions, is still miles behind the legalization campaign, Smart & Safe Florida, in terms of fundraising. The legalization effort has raised over $60 million since launching in late 2022.

DeSantis has been railing against the marijuana measure for months—most recently arguing that it would protect the right to use cannabis more strongly than the First Amendment protects free speech or the Second Amendment protects gun rights—and again claiming that the reform has been a “failed experiment” in states such as Colorado.

The governor said last month that the proposal would allow people to “do marijuana wherever you want—just smoke it, take it, and it would turn Florida into San Francisco or Chicago or some of these places.”

He also reprised one of his chief complaints about the potential impact of legalization: smelling cannabis.

“We’ve got to keep our streets clean. We cannot have every town smelling like marijuana. We cannot have every hotel smelling—theme parks,” he said, adding that voters don’t really understand the specifics of the legalization proposal and that ballot initiatives are generally “so bogus.”

DeSantis acknowledged that the state Supreme Court has a role in reviewing ballot language for constitutionality, and that a majority of justices determined that the marijuana measure met the legal standard. But while he previously correctly predicted the court would approve the initiative following a challenge from state Attorney General Ashley Moody (R), he now says the two dissenting justices were “correct” in trying to block voters from deciding on the measure.

DeSantis also claimed last month that that if voters approve the marijuana legalization initiative, people “will be able to bring 20 joints to an elementary school”—and he again complained about the prevalent odor of cannabis that he says would result from the reform.

Legalization has “not worked in any single place,” the governor said, and he challenged a recent ad from the campaign that promoted regulating cannabis as an alternative to the status quo of people using untested cannabis from illicit sellers.

Meanwhile, according to a Fox News poll released last month, two in three Florida voters support the cannabis initiative—with the issue proving more popular than the governor himself. The survey showed majority support for legalization across the political spectrum, too.

The governor has consistently argued that the state shouldn’t go beyond the existing medical cannabis program and that broader reform would negatively impact the quality of life for Floridians. The Florida Republican Party also formally came out against Amendment 3 last month.

Smart & Safe Florida separately announced in March that it was working to form a coalition of veterans to build voter support for the reform, and the campaign has since formally launched that initiative.

Here’s what the Smart & Safe Florida marijuana legalization initiative would accomplish:

• Adults 21 and older could purchase and possess up to three ounces of cannabis for personal use. The cap for marijuana concentrates would be five grams.
• Medical cannabis dispensaries could “acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana products and marijuana accessories to adults for personal use.”
• The legislature would be authorized—but not required—to approve additional entities that are not currently licensed cannabis dispensaries.
• The initiative specifies that nothing in the proposal prevents the legislature from “enacting laws that are consistent with this amendment.”
• The amendment further clarifies that nothing about the proposal “changes federal law,” which seems to be an effort to avoid past legal challenges about misleading ballot language.
• There are no provisions for home cultivation, expungement of prior records or social equity.
• The measure would take effect six months following approval by voters.

Here’s the full text of the ballot title and summary:

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Photo courtesy of Mike Latimer.