Ahead of announcing his support for the marijuana legalization initiative on Florida’s ballot this weekend, former President Donald Trump met with the CEO of a major cannabis company, as well as with a GOP state senator who is in favor of the reform.
Trump took some by surprise when he took a position on the state measure—which he’ll have the chance to vote on in November as a Florida resident. Before making his announcement on Saturday, he had a meetings with Florida Sen. Joe Gruters (R) and Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers, according to the lawmaker and several other industry sources who confirmed the discussions to Marijuana Moment.
Trulieve has contributed over $70 million to the cannabis campaign Smart & Safe Florida behind Amendment 3.
“A lot of people were talking to him,” Gruters, who previously chaired the Florida Republican Party, told Marijuana Moment in a phone interview on Tuesday, adding that he and Trump had “follow-up conversations to talk about the amendment—what it does and and what I think it will do here in Florida—and the policy surrounding it, and politically, why I think it’s a winner.”
“We discussed the policy at length. Here in Florida, it’s common sense,” Gruters said. “President Trump is certainly trying to make inroads with the younger demographics, where I think a lot of these voters—certainly undecided ones—where this can make a big difference. And I think that certainly had a role.”
Gruters, who said he’s known Trulieve’s Rivers since college, said he’s aware that the CEO spoke with Trump about the issue, but he isn’t aware of the specific details of their conversation. Multiple cannabis executives have also reached out to the Trump campaign to discuss cannabis policy in recent months, he said.
At the same time that there was outreach in favor of the reform, there were also “a lot of people that were trying to talk him out of saying anything nice” about legalization, the senator said.
“Like any major policy decision, he’s going to get input from lots of people, but I’m thankful to be in the circle where I could offer my opinion, and I think he values it,” he said.
Marijuana Moment made repeated attempts to reach Rivers, Trulieve and the Trump campaign for clarification. Rivers initially answered texts and calls but declined to comment on the specific matter of discussions with Trump. Other representatives of Trulieve similarly provided no clarification on the meeting.
After this article was published, a Trulieve spokesperson responded to Marijuana Moment’s queries by claiming that its headline is “misleading” and that the reporting unfairly focused on Rivers given that other industry stakeholders also allegedly communicated with Trump. “Singling her out here is not helpful, not verified, nor appreciated,” the spokesperson said.
In any case, shortly following the discussions with Rivers and Gruters, Trump said at a press conference last month that he’s starting to “agree a lot more” that people should not be criminalized over marijuana given that it’s “being legalized all over the country”—adding that he will “fairly soon” reveal his position.
“As we legalize it, I start to agree a lot more because, you know, it’s being legalized all over the country,” Trump said at a press conference in August. “Florida has something coming up. I’ll be making a statement about that fairly soon.”
A reporter had asked about the Biden-Harris administration push to reschedule cannabis, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, stating repeatedly that people should not be incarcerated over simple cannabis offenses.
“As we legalize it throughout the country—whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing—it’s awfully hard to have people all over the jails that are in jail right now for something that’s legal,” Trump replied. “So I think obviously there’s a lot of sentiment to doing that.”
Then, on Saturday, Trump said he believes voters in his home state of Florida will approve the marijuana legalization initiative, arguing that “someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other States.”
“In Florida, like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3,” the former president said in a post on his social media site Truth Social. “Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly.”
“We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities,” he added. “At the same time, someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other States. We do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana.”
Longtime ally and GOP political operative Roger Stone, who is also a Florida resident and supports the legalization proposal, separately told Marijuana Moment that if Trump did ultimately endorse the measure it would “guarantee victory.”
In more recent comments published on Tuesday, Trump said medical marijuana has been “absolutely amazing” for patients, and that the Florida legalization initiative is “going to be very good” for the state after it passes, which he expects to happen.
Meanwhile, following Trump’s recent announcement of support for the cannabis legalization ballot measure in Florida, the campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris started working to remind voters that while in office, Trump “took marijuana reform backwards.”
In an memo from a senior campaign spokesperson, the Harris campaign accused Trump of “brazen flip flops” on cannabis. The Democratic campaign says it’s one of the Republican former president’s “several bewildering ‘policy proposals’ that deserve real scrutiny.”
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who is sponsoring a bill to federally legalize marijuana called the States Reform Act, separately said that while she hopes Trump will back the Biden administration’s rescheduling move, she also said part of the reason Republicans in Congress have declined to embrace marijuana policy change is because they’re “afraid of it.”
Trump also recently went after Harris over her prosecutorial record on marijuana, claiming that she put “thousands and thousands of Black people in jail” for cannabis offenses—but the full record of her time in office is more nuanced.
Trump’s line of attack, while misleading, was nonetheless notable in the sense that the GOP presidential nominee implied that he disagrees with criminalizing people over marijuana and is moving to leverage the idea that Harris played a role in racially disproportionate mass incarceration.
Meanwhile, Harris selected Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate, choosing a candidate who backed numerous cannabis reform measures in Congress, called for an end to prohibition when he was running for governor and then signed a comprehensive legalization bill into law in 2023.
As president, Trump largely stayed true to his position that marijuana laws should be handled at the state-level, with no major crackdown on cannabis programs as some feared after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama era federal enforcement guidance. In fact, Trump criticized the top DOJ official and suggested the move should be reversed.
While he was largely silent on the issue of legalization, he did tentatively endorse a bipartisan bill to codify federal policy respecting states’ rights to legalize.
That said, on several occasions he released signing statements on spending legislation stipulating that he reserved the right to ignore a long-standing rider that prohibits the Justice Department from using its funds to interfere with state-legal medical marijuana programs.
Before President Joe Biden bowed out of the race, his campaign made much of the president’s mass cannabis pardons and rescheduling push, drawing a contrast with the Trump administration’s record. The Harris campaign so far has not spoken to that particular issue, and the nominee has yet to publicly discuss marijuana policy issues since her own campaign launched.
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Back in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has doubled down on his opposition campaign against the marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on his state’s November ballot. Meanwhile, a prominent conservative pollster is reminding his party that the issue enjoys sizable bipartisan support.
Meanwhile, a Democratic congresswoman who recently said she was on the fence about whether she’d vote for the legalization ballot initiative this November has officially given the measure her endorsement.
There’s been a mixed bag of feedback on Amendment 3 from members of Florida’s congressional delegation.
One pro-legalization GOP congressman, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), recently said he intends to vote against it, strictly because he feels the reform should be enacted statutorily, rather than as a constitutional amendment that would prove more challenging to amend.
On the other hand, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, predicted earlier this year that the measure will pass.
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