One Sunday earlier this month, Dave Portnoy ordered a pizza, plopped down on his sofa to observe soccer, and lit a blunt. He was indignant. The Barstool Sports activities founder, who’s beloved by many right-leaning younger males, was in his mansion in Massachusetts, the place he may legally smoke weed “like a human,” as he stated in a video posted on X. However he can’t try this at his dwelling in Miami. “Freedom. It’s about freedom,” Portnoy stated, encouraging viewers to vote sure on an modification that might legalize leisure hashish in Florida, earlier than blowing smoke into the digital camera.
If Florida passes the modification, the state would turn into one thing of an aberration. Though 24 different states have already got authorized pot on the books, simply 4 of them voted for Donald Trump in 2020: Alaska, Missouri, Ohio, and Montana. Many prime Republicans stay vehemently towards authorized weed, warning that the drug brings dysfunction and well being dangers, particularly as marijuana has turn into stronger. Earlier this 12 months, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin vetoed a invoice permitting the sale of weed, making a declare that leisure marijuana is linked to “elevated gang exercise and violent crime”—a hyperlink that researchers are nonetheless divided over. Senator J. D. Vance, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, has additionally repeatedly expressed that he’s towards legalization.
However the measure in Florida has the assist of the state’s most well-known Republican. Trump posted on Fact Social earlier this month that he might be voting for the initiative. “I imagine it’s time to finish useless arrests and incarcerations of adults for small quantities of marijuana for private use,” he wrote. Polls recommend that the referendum is hovering only a tick above the 60 % threshold it must go and subsequently enshrine in Florida’s structure the fitting to own, buy, and use marijuana. It’s not a certain factor, but when it does certainly undergo, the choice could be “an extremely necessary concession for American conservatism,” Allan Lichtman, a historian at American College, advised me. Florida may find yourself turning into a tipping level for the remainder of the Republican Social gathering.
When Florida acts, different conservative states hear. Underneath Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, Florida has positioned itself as an antidote to blue America. One week after New York introduced its COVID “vaccine passport” in 2021, DeSantis issued an order banning native companies from requiring proof of immunization. Different purple states, together with Texas, Georgia, and Alabama, adopted swimsuit. And after Florida enacted its “Don’t Say Homosexual” regulation in March 2022, greater than a dozen states launched related payments governing the instructing of sexual orientation in faculties. “Florida has been proper on the epicenter of the tradition battle that’s been so necessary for Republicans in recent times,” Lichtman stated.
With authorized weed, Florida has not escaped the tradition wars. DeSantis has remained vehemently towards the measure, even after Trump’s endorsement, as has the state Republican Social gathering, which has stated that legalization would “INSTANTLY make Florida extra blue.” The state accredited medical marijuana in 2016, and Florida’s largest medical-marijuana dispensary has spent tens of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to wrangle the almost 900,000 signatures required to get the referendum on the poll in November. The DeSantis administration appealed to the state’s supreme court docket in an unsuccessful try to get the initiative struck from the poll.
DeSantis’s place is aligned with the GOP’s total message on marijuana, which has stayed pretty constant even because the get together has flipped on many different points. In spite of everything, Richard Nixon led the Battle on Medication, Ronald Reagan declared marijuana “most likely essentially the most harmful drug in the US,” and each Presidents Bush performed huge enforcement sweeps to sign that the federal authorities wouldn’t loosen its prohibitionist stance. For his half, Trump stated in 2015 that leisure marijuana is “dangerous, and I really feel strongly about that.” He has bragged that he’s by no means touched the stuff. As president, he additionally claimed to have donated one among his paychecks to fund a public-health marketing campaign towards the drug. At instances, nevertheless, he has additionally stated that states ought to resolve whether or not or to not legalize.
However Republican voters are progressively breaking away from the get together’s hard-line stance. A slim majority are actually in favor of legalization, in response to Gallup, which has tracked Individuals’ views on marijuana yearly since 1969. Republicans’ newfound assist is as a lot a matter of age as of politics. Not like the primary state get together, the Florida Younger Republicans group known as legalization “the apparent selection.”
If Florida finally ends up turning into a weed trendsetter for Republicans, it wouldn’t be the primary time. One thing related occurred with medical marijuana: By the point legalization got here to Florida, many blue states had already green-lit their very own medical-marijuana packages. However Florida was the primary state within the South to dispense medical marijuana. Within the subsequent few years, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana adopted. If Florida passes the brand new measure, it could current “a notable marker on this sample that we’ve seen,” Joanne Spetz, the director of the Institute for Well being Coverage Research at UC San Francisco, advised me.
A part of that diffusion of medical marijuana was influenced by extra conservative states studying from the expertise of extra liberal ones, and designing their packages to be extra palatable to a inhabitants that doesn’t wish to see beachfront pot docs promoting medical playing cards to each vacationer with a headache. In purple states, medical-marijuana packages “are typically extra restrictive” than in blue states, Daniel Mallinson, a public-policy professor at Penn State Harrisburg, advised me. The identical could maintain for leisure marijuana. Whether or not states observe Florida’s lead would possibly come down as to whether the state can implement legalization in a approach that concurrently fulfills the desire of the voters and doesn’t make retirees in the Villages lament that they’ve all of a sudden been transported to Denver. Put merely: It’d come right down to the scent.
“I don’t need each lodge to actually scent,” DeSantis warned at a press convention in early March. It’s a priority shared by Trump himself, who final month posted that Florida should be certain that “we don’t scent marijuana in all places we go, like we do in most of the Democrat run Cities.” New York Republicans have launched laws to ban marijuana smoking in public in response to New Yorkers being “repeatedly assailed with the pungent odor of marijuana on public sidewalks, in parking tons and different public areas”—which even Democratic Mayor Eric Adams acknowledged is pervasive. And Vance opposed his personal state’s legalization efforts, as a result of “I need to have the ability to do regular issues with out being slammed within the face with the scent of weed.”
In fact, most states with authorized marijuana additionally prohibit public consumption of the drug, however enforcement is usually spotty. Florida isn’t precisely identified for successfully stopping public dysfunction. It’s the state that has made headlines for Disney World patrons making an attempt to steal a golf cart, annual spring-break riots, and males who danger hazard with alligators (whether or not it’s throwing a gator by way of a drive-thru window or stealing one from a mini-golf course).
Even when Florida enters a brand new period of reefer insanity and manages to by some means hold the Disney World vacationers, spring breakers, and “Florida males” calm, not each purple state will shortly observe swimsuit; voters in Oklahoma and Arkansas voted towards legalization in recent times. Nonetheless, Florida’s measure may very well be a win for conservatives—even those who’re anti-weed. They’re proper: Marijuana could be addictive, and pot smoke stinks. However the established order—one wherein marijuana is banned on the federal stage—retains the drug in a grey space that forestalls it from being studied on college campuses and controlled by the FDA. Sure, legalization would possibly imply Republicans scent weed on road corners, but it surely may additionally enable for extra analysis into the results of marijuana, and extra regulation of the place and when the drug can be utilized.
Till a crucial mass of purple states embraces leisure weed, it’s onerous to see something altering. Florida can not carry all the Republican Social gathering alongside in a single day, however maybe someday quickly, Dave Portnoy and his “stoolies” in Florida can legally order pizza, watch soccer, and smoke a joint on the sofa.
