John Grant: Medical marijuana amendment is all about Charlie Crist

When I was first elected, one of the first lobbyists to darken my door was a highly paid man who was lobbying for “highway safety” in Florida. He said he was representing a non-profit group that was concerned that the recent conversion of highway signs to metric was a safety hazard as people took their focus off the highway to figure out how far 50 kilometers was.

I was curious and did a little research on my own. It seems that this group was heavily funded by the company that sold the reflective paint for the highway signs. No wonder they were suddenly concerned with safety. I also found out that the same company had bankrolled the conversion to metric to begin with, ostensibly for the same reason.

Recently there was a move in New Jersey to extend the deer-hunting season in hopes of reducing the herd that was rapidly expanding and eating their way through neighborhoods, as they spread lyme disease.

No surprisingly a well-funded non-profit group formed to protect those fury creatures from the hunter’s crosshairs. It turns out that the money all came from the auto collision industry, which stood to lose millions in automobile repairs resulting from deer strikes.

Yes, any serious politician will always dig deep enough to find out the true motives of those who push for legislative reform, especially when there is a lot of money involved.

Now that the Florida Supreme Court has ruled that the language of the proposed legalization of “medical” marijuana sales in Florida meets constitutional requirements to go on the ballot, it probably will, assuming the county elections offices verify that 683,149 signatures of the nearly 1 million collected are valid.

Since it is for “medical reasons,” I assume a lot of pot smokers will suddenly get sick or at least have the symptoms described in the amendment.

Hired signature gathers were paid between $1 and $4 per signature and stationed outside courthouses, restaurants, stores and post offices to get signatures to put “medical” marijuana sales legalization on the ballot. Under the provisions of the amendment, a person over 21 can buy and handle the marijuana on behalf of up to five patients. I guess pot smoking requires a lot of “staff.”

Who funded this move and why? The answer is John (“For the People”) Morgan, head of the largest trial lawyer group in the state, Morgan and Crist, err I mean Morgan and Morgan. All the billboards confuse me.

Last year business interests and opponents of trial lawyers got together and with the help of Will Weatherford and Don Gaetz, and under the leadership of Gov. Rick Scott, major tort reforms were enacted. Similar efforts had been defeated in many years gone by. The trial bar was handed its head on a legislative platter.

Morgan says that Scott needs to go and that the man to do it is Charlie Crist, the Republican turned Independent, turned Democrat, turned Obama loyalist.

After all, when Crist left office, Morgan gave him a job, though I understand he has yet to be sighted in court.

But his face appears “liberally” on interstate billboards. I guess Morgan needed a really experienced attorney and Charlie had three times more experience taking the Florida Bar Exam than most other attorneys.

So how does that tie in with marijuana? The answer is simple. Without Obama on the ballot, the Democrats need something to flush out their kind of voters and get them to the polls, ostensibly to vote for marijuana, but also for Charlie while they are there.

With the marijuana issue seeing more support from Democrats than Republicans, it’s no surprise that Crist would support having a marijuana ballot initiative on the same ticket as his race against the incumbent GOP governor.

After all, now that Obama has admitted that he smoked pot, it would only be natural for Charlie to embrace its legalization, like he embraces every other thing Obama does.

The amendment could drive more voter turnout in Crist’s favor. A recent poll shows 87 percent of Democrats supporting the legalization of marijuana. So the “D’s” are hoping to get an election buzz from the issue and John Morgan is hoping to keep more anti-trial lawyer legislation from becoming law and thus eating into his “For the People” money machine.

So, at the end of the day, just ask what this marijuana buzz is all about and when you turn over enough rocks, you will find out that it’s all about Charlie. That’s my opinion and I am sticking to it.