Smart & Safe Florida, the political committee behind 2024’s failed measure, filed a new proposal for a constitutional amendment with minor tweaks.
The cannabis legalization group behind Florida’s unsuccessful 2024 ballot measure won’t be taking any time off in its pursuit to reform the state’s laws for those 21 and older.
Smart & Safe Florida, a political action committee chaired by David Bellamy of the pop music duo The Bellamy Brothers, filed a new initiative on Jan. 14 with the Florida Division of Elections to place a constitutional amendment to legalize adult-use cannabis on the state’s November 2026 ballot.
The new filing comes two months after Florida voters provided 56% majority support for a similar initiative, Amendment 3, that appeared on the 2024 ballot, falling short of the 60% supermajority threshold for the ballot measure to pass—a benchmark that voters approved in the 2006 election.
“Tonight, a strong majority of Floridians voted in support of legalizing recreational marijuana for adults,” Smart & Safe Florida officials said in a press release on election night. “While the results of Amendment 3 did not clear the 60 percent threshold, we are eager to work with the governor and legislative leaders who agree with us on decriminalizing recreational marijuana for adults, addressing public consumption, continuing our focus on child safety, and expanding access to safe marijuana through home grow.”
RELATED: Florida’s Cannabis Legalization Measure Fails Despite Majority Support
Although the 2024 measure drew bipartisan support—including from President-elect Donald Trump, a Florida voter—it was vehemently opposed by Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who claimed public places would be overwhelmed by the smell of those smoking cannabis.
The governor’s administration also accused the 2024 campaign’s main financial supporter, Tallahassee-based Trulieve, of attempting to create a monopoly for the state’s existing medical cannabis operators through an automatic transition to a forthcoming adult-use marketplace, failing to mention that most states follow this course to help ensure a smooth shift to an expanded program and that the measure implicitly allowed for other entities to be licensed.
According to campaign finance records, Trulieve contributed more than $145 million of the $154 million in donations to fund the 2024 legalization push.
Others condemned the 2024 measure based on public health and safety fears often pushed by prohibitionists, from claims of increased youth use to impaired driving.
While Smart & Safe Florida’s new initiative for 2026—the “Adult Personal Use of Marijuana”—contains many of the same provisions, it added language to the ballot summary clarifying that the measure would “prohibit smoking and vaping in public,” “maintains prohibition on driving under [the] influence,” and “prohibits marketing and packaging attractive to children.”
Also, the 2026 ballot summary maintains language regarding the proposal applying “to Florida law; does not change, or immunize violations of, federal law.” This was a key inclusion necessary to survive the Florida Supreme Court’s judicial review process in 2024 after justices rejected a pair of measures aimed at landing on the state’s 2022 ballot measure.
The 2026 initiative also proposes to:
The legislative requirement in that final bullet point veers from the 2024 proposal.
Smart & Safe Florida filed the new proposal a day after DeSantis announced a special legislative session to begin on Jan. 27, in part, for lawmakers to overhaul the state’s citizen initiative process for proposing constitutional amendments, such as the cannabis and abortion-related amendments that failed in 2024, The Associated Press reported.
DeSantis’ Department of State claimed in September 2024 that many of the petitions that helped land the abortion rights constitutional amendment on November’s ballot were fraudulent.