Former President Donald Trump can make news 24/7 — and that includes on an otherwise sleepy Saturday on Labor Day weekend.
While many readers were having breakfast, the Republican presidential nominee broke with Gov. Ron DeSantis and other Florida leaders, supporting the Adult Personal Use of Marijuana citizen initiative that would legalize recreational use as seen in Trump’s native New York and other states.
“In Florida, like so many other States that have already given their approval, personal amounts of marijuana will be legalized for adults with Amendment 3. Whether people like it or not, this will happen through the approval of the Voters, so it should be done correctly,” Trump said.
“We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities. At the same time, someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other States. We do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana,” Trump added.
Trump’s position isn’t altogether surprising.
Weeks ago, during a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, he teased this very thing.
“As we legalize it, I start to agree a lot more because it’s being legalized all over the country,” Trump said. “Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, it’s awfully hard to have people all over the jails that are in jail right now for something that’s legal.”
This position puts him in accord with Florida voters, as Post readers already know, who like legalized weed more than Trump — or his opponent, Kamala Harris.
Recent University of North Florida polling shows Trump leads Harris 49% to 42% in the state. But while Trump didn’t even have a majority, cannabis had near-supermajority support, with 64% of all voters backing legal pot — including 50% of Republicans.
Trump’s stance on marijuana comes one day after he declared he’s against the Amendment to Limit Government Interference with Abortion, which would remove restrictions on the procedure (Florida bans it after six weeks of pregnancy, with some limited exceptions). While Trump doesn’t like the six-week ban, he also opposes late-term abortion of the sort legal elsewhere.
While Trump’s position on the abortion amendment likely reassures Republican elected leaders in the state, the cannabis position puts him at odds with DeSantis, who has said if weed were legal, people could hold “80 joints” at once and “bring 20 joints to an elementary school.”
The Florida amendment, if it passes, would allow for legislative restrictions on public smoking though, as Trump noted.
It’s useful to examine whether this will help Trump beyond the state of Florida.
Poll after poll shows an ongoing battle in swing states, many of which have legalized weed already, between Harris and Trump.
One attendant irony of Trump’s recalibrated cannabis position is that it puts him to the left of the Biden administration, which has dithered over rescheduling the president promised in his 2020 campaign. Per the Federal Register, the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration are slated to hold a hearing in December on a potential move to Schedule III.
Trump has been mute on rescheduling marijuana, and his administration made no moves on that front when he was president. In fact, his final budget proposed removing protections for medical-marijuana users. But the 2018 Farm Bill he signed allowed for hemp to be synthesized to create THC and other intoxicating compounds. Despite expectations that loophole would have been closed by now, it hasn’t happened.
Marijuana likely isn’t the issue that will decide the 2024 election. But Trump’s willingness to embrace pragmatism over partisan polemic when it comes to the future of the plant may be something that resonates particularly with younger voters, perhaps offsetting Harris’ gains with the demographic in recent weeks.
That is, if he’s willing to play it up beyond the isolated context of the Sunshine State.