In Iowa, Ron DeSantis disparaged his home state’s more than 850,000 medical marijuana patients, suggesting at least some were just using the program as a “pretext” for recreational enjoyment.
In response to a question about Florida’s vertical integration scheme, the Florida Governor told supporters in Dubuque.
“Look there was, you know, how much of that is medicinal versus how much of it is, ‘That’s the pretext for it’? I don’t know, but it is in our constitution,” DeSantis said, noting that Florida’s program was approved by a constitutional amendment in 2016.
DeSantis also suggested he was opposed to vertical integration as a matter of principle, saying “as a general matter with programs, you want there to be open field and competition that’s going to make it better for consumers and that will make it better for taxpayers.”
The exchange between DeSantis and an audience member was timely, given a widely-touted CNN piece that charged the Governor with not “draining the swamp” of Florida’s cannabis market, instead accepting support from the same industry he had called a “cartel” early in his first term.
DeSantis has been all over the place rhetorically during not just this campaign but his political career when it comes to cannabis. In Iowa this summer, he said he opposed legalization because “they can throw fentanyl in” to the product. He didn’t clarify how that would happen in a dispensary, and there has yet to be a single case of fentanyl-adulterated marijuana from any dispensary in Florida since the program’s inception.
“We have medical in our Constitution, we have medical marijuana, we enforce that, you know, we abide by it, but to take action now to make it even more available, I would not do that,” DeSantis said, adding that legalization in Colorado has only expanded the “black market.”
Early in his first term in office, DeSantis pleased reformers when he came out against the Rick Scott-era opposition to cannabis that could be smoked. Previously, loose flower was not available, with only vaporizer cups for sale at dispensaries.
“I look at someone who has Lou Gehrig’s disease or terminal cancer or multiple sclerosis. … I think the Florida voters who voted for that wanted them to have access to medical marijuana under the supervision of a physician. Whether they have to smoke it or not, who am I to judge that?” DeSantis said. “I want people to have their suffering relieved. I don’t think this law is up to snuff.”
However, the Governor took a harder line against marijuana in recent years.
“If you look at some of the stuff that’s now coming down, there’s a lot of really bad things in it. It’s not necessarily what you would’ve had 30 years ago when someone’s in college and they’re doing something. You have some really, really bad stuff in there, so I think having the ability to identify that, I think, that’s safety, and quite frankly when you get into some of that stuff, it’s not medicinal at that point for sure,” DeSantis said, in response to a reporter’s question in 2021.
In 2022, the Governor took an even harder line position against so-called “recreational” use.
“What I don’t like about it is if you go to some of these places that have done it, the stench when you’re out there, I mean, it smells so putrid,” he told reporters. “I could not believe the pungent odor that you would see in some of these places. I don’t want to see that here. I want people to be able to breathe freely.”
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