A Florida campaign says it’s collected more than one million signatures to put a marijuana legalization initiative on the state’s 2026 ballot—and so it’s voluntarily declining to appeal a legal case in which a judge recently allowed state officials to invalidate about 200,000 petitions over a largely procedural issue.
In a notice sent to Florida’s Second Judicial Circuit on Tuesday, Smart & Safe Florida advised that it would not be pursuing an appeal of the judgement, which held that formatting changes made to the cannabis petition rendered approximately 200,000 signatures illegitimate.
While that decision means a significant chunk of the total signatures they’d amassed won’t count, the campaign said in a statement shared with Marijuana Moment on Tuesday that they still have plenty of buffer to qualify for ballot placement, so they won’t be challenging the court’s decision.
“The Smart & Safe campaign will not appeal the recent court ruling to invalidate over 200,000 verified petitions as we are confident in the ability to submit enough petitions to make ballot position so long as the state does its job in good faith to process the submitted petitions and accurately report the verification totals,” it said. “To date, excluding the mail-in ballots, the campaign has submitted over 1,010,000 signed petitions.”
“Given that the state has not updated its online reporting to reflect submitted petitions and due to the excessive backlog caused by the state’s three month freeze on petition verification, we urge the Secretary of State to timely process the petitions and update its reporting of the verified petitions as required by law,” the campaign said. “The public deserves to have their petitions counted.”
Smart & Safe filed a separate lawsuit with the state Supreme Court over that issue last month, alleging that officials are violating election laws by stalling a required review process for the measure without justification. The state has since agreed to move forward with the processing.
Meanwhile, the campaign is encouraging voters who signed the petition to contact their local election supervisors or the secretary of state’s office to determine whether their signatures were invalidated.
This is Smart & Safe Florida’s second run at the ballot. They successfully secured ballot placement for a 2024 version of the initiative—and a majority did vote to pass it, but not enough to meet the state’s steep 60 percent threshold to approve a constitutional amendment.
A federal judge in August separately delivered a win to Smart & Safe Florida—granting “complete relief” from provisions of a law the governor signed to impose other serious restrictions on signature gathering.
While the law the governor signed in May wasn’t directly targeted at the cannabis initiative, there’s been concern among supporters that it could jeopardize an already complex and costly process to collect enough signatures to make the ballot. That’s because it would block non-residents and non-citizens from collecting signatures for ballot measures.
In March, meanwhile, two Democratic members of Congress representing Florida asked the federal government to investigate what they described as “potentially unlawful diversion” of millions in state Medicaid funds via a group with ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). The money was used to fight against a citizen ballot initiative, vehemently opposed by the governor, that would have legalized marijuana for adults.
The lawmakers’ letter followed allegations that a $10 million donation from a state legal settlement was improperly made to the Hope Florida Foundation, which later sent the money to two political nonprofits, which in turn sent $8.5 million to a campaign opposing Amendment 3.
The governor said in February that the newest marijuana legalization measure is in “big time trouble” with the state Supreme Court, predicting it will be blocked from going before voters next year.
“There’s a lot of different perspectives on on marijuana,” DeSantis said. “It should not be in our Constitution. If you feel strongly about it, you have elections for the legislature. Go back candidates that you believe will be able to deliver what your vision is on that.”
“But when you put these things in the Constitution—and I think, I mean, the way they wrote, there’s all kinds of things going on in here. I think it’s going to have big time trouble getting through the Florida Supreme Court,” he said.
The latest initiative was filed with the secretary of state’s office just months after the initial version failed during the November 2024 election—despite an endorsement from President Donald Trump.
Smart & Safe Florida is hoping the revised version will succeed in 2026. The campaign—which in the last election cycle received tens of millions of dollars from cannabis industry stakeholders, principally the multi-state operator Trulieve—incorporated certain changes into the new version that seem responsive to criticism opponents raised during the 2024 push.
For example, it now specifically states that the “smoking and vaping of marijuana in any public place is prohibited.”Another section asserts that the legislature would need to approve rules dealing with the “regulation of the time, place, and manner of the public consumption of marijuana.”
Last year, the governor accurately predicted that the 2024 cannabis measure from the campaign would survive a legal challenge from the state attorney general. It’s not entirely clear why he feels this version would face a different outcome.
While there’s uncertainty around how the state’s highest court will navigate the measure, a poll released in February showed overwhelming bipartisan voter support for the reform—with 67 percent of Florida voters backing legalization, including 82 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of independents and 55 percent of Republicans.
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In the background, a recent poll from a Trump-affiliated research firm found that nearly 9 in 10 Florida voters say they should have the right to decide to legalize marijuana in the state.
Meanwhile, a pro-legalization GOP state lawmaker recently filed a bill to amend state law to codify that the public use of marijuana is prohibited.
Rep. Alex Andrade (R), the sponsor, said earlier this year that embracing cannabis reform is a way for the Republican party to secure more votes from young people.
Separately, Florida medical marijuana officials are actively revoking the registrations of patients and caregivers with drug-related criminal records. The policy is part of broad budget legislation signed into law earlier this year by DeSantis. The provisions in question direct the state Department of Health (DOH) to cancel registrations of medical marijuana patients and caregivers if they’re convicted of—or plead guilty or no contest to—criminal drug charges.
Read Smart & Safe Florida’s latest filing in the signature invalidation case below:
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
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