In less than six months Floridians will head to the polls to decide whether it will become the 25th state to legalize recreational marijuana. If passed, Amendment 3 will allow adults ages 21 and older to lawfully possess up to three ounces of marijuana for personal use.
Sponsored by Smart and Safe Florida, the initiative was approved to gather signatures from those interested in supporting it in August 2022. By June 2023, Florida’s Division of Elections determined enough signatures had been garnered to qualify for the ballot.
The initiative received the Amendment 3 designation in Jan. 2024 after submitting over one million supporting signatures. To pass into law, the legislation will need at least 60 percent of the vote in November. If successful, Florida will join states like California, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, New York and more who have legalized recreational marijuana.
Proponents of the bill tout its potential economic, decriminalization and regulatory benefits; but opponents say it is not as transparent as it seems because it omits some very important facts concerning federal laws. They also argue recreational marijuana’s legalization can conflate and confuse the industry as it relates to serving sick individuals who actually need cannabis for medical purposes.
While advocates and opponents have passionately expressed why they are either for or against Amendment 3, inquiring minds want to know how the bill’s passage will affect the Black community – which has long been disproportionately criminalized for participating in an industry white growers and dispensary owners are now collectively making billions from lawfully.
James ‘Munch’ Mungin is a native Black Miamian who has some concerns. A Liberty City resident and founder of AllLikeMinds Community Newsroom, Mungin said he is leaning towards voting yes to Amendment 3 in November. However, Mungin said he is still undecided because he’s skeptical about the motives of some of those backing the bill, including Smart and Safe Florida and Trulieve Cannabis Corp. – which has medical and recreational marijuana dispensaries in the sunshine state.
“When you read the bill, the bill is not formulated for the people, the bill is formulated to benefit corporations,” Mungin told Hy-Lo News in an exclusive interview. “The recreational part is the buzz word to get all the people to vote for it and buy into it. That’s the way they’re going to promote it, but when you really read the bill, it’s more about how the businesses are going to be set up for it.”
He also noted the bill does nothing to resolve the high number of Black people incarcerated from marijuana-related offenses. “There’s nothing in the bill that’s saying everybody who got a recreational weed charge from before [the legislation is passed] is going to have them dropped,” Mungin said.
Mungin also questioned Smart and Safe and Trulieve’s motives for supporting Amendment 3. The most recent campaign finance report, dated May 31, shows Smart and Safe reported over $60 million in total contributions, the bulk of which comes from Trulieve. Smart and Safe also received donations from Verano Holdings, Curaleaf and Green Thumb Industries. Opponents to the bill had only raised $3,800 from Floridians Against Recreational Marijuana at the time of the report.
“Smart and Safe Florida donated a whole bunch of money but who are they,” Mungin asked. “And with Trulieve, what’s their deal on diversity? How do they treat employees? How many Black people are they hiring and what’s their stance on [hiring] convicted felons?”
After sharing that one of his friends lost his brother due to him overdosing on a joint he didn’t know was laced with fentanyl, Mungin expressed his belief that marijuana dealers who can’t afford to pay the millions of dollars necessary to enter the industry legally will begin more frequently lacing their products with other drugs to make them more potent to compete with legal dealers.
“Dispensaries are supposed to have 100 percent, Grade A tested, pure products, but that’s not even happening.” Mungin said, noting sometimes even dispensaries’ products may be compromised.
Former Florida State Sen. Dwight Bullard said Mungin’s concerns are valid. Some of the issues raised are the reason Bullard said he was forced to vote against the policy that “favored a small group of growers” for the medical marijuana initiative while he was a legislator in 2016.
“I was in the legislature at the time when the medicinal marijuana ballot initiative went into effect and established some prerequisites for the marijuana industry in the State of Florida,” Bullard told Hy-Lo News in an exclusive interview. “Unfortunately, I had to vote against it (the grower policy) even though I believe in legalization, primarily because the system was set up to profit a few people in particular.”
Bullard expounded, stating there are only five legal growers in Florida who were given “almost exclusive rights” to make the bulk of profit from the legal marijuana industry. He added that it is very expensive to get involved and while proponents are touting the potential economic benefits, per usual, Black people are priced out of the market because they do not have access to the multi-million-dollar capital required.
“For people who are seeing all these various smoke shops and cannabis dispensaries popping up everywhere, it’s almost like a franchise fee that they have to pay back to these handful of people who are making the bulk of the money for licensing,” Bullard explained.
“None of those are explicitly Black people,” Bullard continued. “One of the main arguments before I left the legislature was that Black farmers and Black growers had been left out of the initial legislation altogether. … As it stands right now, there aren’t a lot of Black people that stand to profit from the system as it’s set up.”
Still, Bullard believes Floridians should vote yes to Amendment 3 due to how it could open up possibilities for retroactive pardons and decreased arrests in the future.
“It’s a critical amendment, not only for Black people, but for all people, primarily because it approves the recreational use and possession of marijuana in the state of Florida. So, the civil rights, the criminal justice side of it is super important,” Bullard said. “The economic side is something that definitely can be worked on after the fact; and I think the retroactivity of the criminal justice system side for me is also important [because if the amendment passes] there’s an opportunity to go back and put legislation [to pardon marijuana offenses] in place.”
A financial impact statement that examines the potential economic benefit Amendment 3’s passage would have estimates it could “generate at least $195.6 million annually in state and local sales tax revenues once the retail market is fully operational, although the timing of this occurring is unclear.”
In May, the U.S. Justice Department took a formal step to re-classify cannabis as a lower-risk substance by sending a proposed rule to the Federal Register. The move came one month after President Joe Biden’s administration announced it would make marijuana a Schedule III drug instead of a Schedule I, but it would still be illegal at the federal level.
“This is monumental,” Biden said in a video statement. “It’s an important move toward reversing longstanding inequities. … Far too many lives have been upended because of a failed approach to marijuana, and I’m committed to righting those wrongs. You have my word on it.”
Soon-to-be former hemp saleswoman Vaniece Catron believes recreational marijuana should remain illegal at all levels. For those who may think this sounds like hypocrisy, Catron makes it clear she believes the cannabis plant is “medicine from God.” She also thinks people who abuse the use of it in high doses open themselves up to debilitating consequences, including addiction and decreased productivity.
A Black disabled U.S. army veteran who suffers from PTSD, Catron said when she started taking hemp, it changed her life. As a devout Christian, Catron admits she was initially skeptical when a cannabis retailer reached out to recruit her as a salesperson for them.
“I was like I’m not selling weed. My dad was a cop for 30-something years,” Catron recalled, noting a conversation she had with the owner of the medical marijuana company. “He knew at this point as we were talking that I was a Christian and he said, ‘You believe in God. You know that only God can make these things. And He makes them for a reason.’”
Catron said the cannabis CEO convinced her to try some free samples, which he mailed to her home. Without knowing anything about dosage, Catron said she casually tried a hemp gummy the day they arrived and 45-minutes later felt unexpected relief.
“It was like I was carrying a big, huge backpack on my back and it was just gone immediately, like within a second. And I was just in shock. I just felt amazing. My brain was clear. I was just like, whoa,” Catron recalled.
That day, she came up with her business plan for her hemp business, Manna For Your Mind, Body & Soul. She eventually began selling a variety of hemp products and has been an advocate of using hemp since 2018.
Fast forward to today and Catron said she is heavily considering leaving the business due to the direction the industry is going in.
So, what is the difference between the hemp Catron applauds and the marijuana she disapproves of? According to an article by Healthline, hemp and marijuana are the same plant. However, hemp has 0.3 percent less of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) while marijuana has more. “Because the THC level in hemp is so low, it’s unlikely to get you high,” the article states.
Catron says recreational marijuana falls into the latter category and, as a result, she will be voting no to Amendment 3 in November.
“They’re making [recreational] marijuana legal and a lot of these hemp companies are having a hard time with it. What’s happening is people are feeling like it’s not strong enough so they’ve been making the hemp stronger and stronger because people want to feel high,” Catron explained. “My big argument is this is for health; this is to help you. This is not to numb you.”
“They just want to be high, and they don’t want to have to think about their problems or life or anything. And hemp actually doesn’t do that. It doesn’t make you high. That’s a side effect of [potent] marijuana,” Catron continued. “Hemp actually gets rid of stress, depression, anxiety, inflammation, insomnia, pain. It actually does what you need it to do so that you can be yourself so that you can deal with life without all the stress and angst on your back.”
Catron added that potent marijuana is a gateway to other drugs that makes people “lazy and nonproductive” while “hemp actually inspires you to do better” by decreasing adverse emotions. She also shared her experience attending cannabis expos, stating many people look nothing like her and railed against what she sees as greed at the expense of her community.
“It’s a huge moneymaker and I hate to say this, but the white folks wanted in on that money that they’d been arresting Black people for all these years,” Catron said. “You should see it. They have these big expos that you can go to where you get all these free samples and you get to try all the different stuff from all the different businesses. The first couple of years, it was all white people with gold chains on, Run DMC outfits, Run DMC-looking gym shoes and Kangols. And I’m like, what? What are y’all doing? And now the last one I went to, and I said I wasn’t going to anymore, it was 90 percent, like mostly Asian, Chinese people.”
Though Mungin, Bullard and Catron have varying perspectives, they all have agreed on one thing. They want what they think is best for their community so they plan to vote. It’s something Bullard wants to remind the community is just the first step.
“The work still falls on us as a community. We need to make the demand, to put the pressure on people, to make the noise and get loud and get active about what it is that we need,” Bullard said. “It actually starts on November 5 for us to get all the things that we want. If you want to get into the industry, if you want to find a pathway, if you want to become an investor, you have to make the demand, make those things easier. Otherwise, they’ll try and box Black people out like they always have.”
