Trulieve kicks in another $5M in push to legalize pot

Bills to cap pot potency were stamped out. Image via AP.

Trulieve, one of the state’s biggest medical marijuana companies, has now put up nearly $65 million to help get Amendment 3 passed.

The latest campaign finance reports show that Trulieve kicked in another $5 million in August to Smart & Safe Florida, the political committee backing the effort to legalize recreational marijuana.

The contribution from Trulieve — which has come under fire from Gov. Ron DeSantis for its role in boosting Amendment 3 — came 10 days after Citadel CEO and billionaire Ken Griffin dropped $12 million into a committee run by DeSantis Chief of Staff James Uthmeier that has launched an effort to try to defeat the initiative.

Smart & Safe Florida has now raised a total of $71.6 million over the past two years as part of the effort to get the measure before voters. Most of the funding has come from Trulieve although other companies have contributed in the past few months. The campaign report filed on Friday shows that the political committee has more than $15.3 million unspent.

The committee has already paid for television and radio ads urging voters to say yes to Amendment 3 and the latest report shows that it paid another $1.13 million to Ax Media. Ax Media is a media buying firm linked to Axiom Strategies and Jeff Roe, a well-known Republican consultant who last year helped run a super PAC that supported DeSantis’ unsuccessful run for President.

Meanwhile, campaign reports show that Keep Florida Clean — the anti-pot committee led by Uthmeier — only raised $286 after getting the large contribution from Griffin. But the latest report does show that the committee paid $40,000 to P2 Pathway Public Affairs, a Washington, D.C., firm with a team including some advisors and top campaign staff who worked on DeSantis’ re-election in 2022 and during his failed presidential campaign.

If passed by at least 60% of voters, Amendment 3 would allow adults in Florida to possess and use recreational marijuana. Medical marijuana was approved by voters in 2016.

Amendment 3 is opposed by DeSantis and the Republican Party of Florida. But the measure has lined up support from some Republicans, including Sen. Joe Gruters, the former Chair of the Republican Party of Florida who is a longtime ally of President Donald Trump.

Two new polls released in the past week showed different outcomes for the proposed initiative. One poll from Florida Atlantic University contends that the amendment is falling short of the 60% support needed to pass, although it also found a significant number of voters remain undecided about the initiative.

The poll, conducted by FAU’s PolCom Lab and the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies in collaboration with Mainstreet Research, found that 56% of those surveyed are in support. 

But a poll from USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN released this week found that the amendment had 63% support and only 3.2% of voters are undecided. The FAU poll has a margin of error of 3 percentage points, while the USA Today poll had a 4.4-percentage-point margin of error.