Ron DeSantis now says weed legalization would let people have ’80 joints’ at a time

african female smoking

Florida’s Governor thinks that if recreational cannabis is made legal in the state, people will being holding a massive amount of weed.

“It gives you a limitless constitutional right to possess and smoke. I think it’s up to like, what, 40 joints, is that the three ounces would be 40? More than that, 80 joints. Something like that,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said, urging the Republican Party of Florida to fight the ballot initiative during a breakfast meeting at Milwaukee’s Republican National Convention.

The Florida Supreme Court gave its approval in April to the Adult Personal Use of Marijuana citizen initiative to appear on the ballot. The language could allow people to possess three ounces of flower or five grams of concentrate. That translates to roughly 27 joints per ounce by the Governor’s math.

DeSantis has issued similar warnings about potential pot legalization, but the number of joints he referenced has increased over time.

“I think you’re going to see people, you will be able to bring 20 joints to an elementary school. Is that really going to be good for the state of Florida? I don’t think so,” he said in June.

DeSantis has taken a hard line against recreational marijuana for years.

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.

“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.”