Florida’s legal weed amendment, Amendment 3, failed. What now?

The million dollar pursuit recreational marijuana in Florida has failed.

Amendment 3, which would have allowed adults 21 and older to purchase and use marijuana without a medical card, received about 56% of the vote, short of the 60% needed to pass.

The amendment drew opposition from Governor Ron DeSantis, who held press conferences in the weeks before the election to speak out against the measure. Government agencies also ran anti-marijuana ads.

Now that the amendment has failed, here’s what you need to know about Amendment 3 and marijuana in Florida.

What was Amendment 3?

Amendment 3 would have allowed adults 21 and older to purchase and use up to three ounces of marijuana.

The measure was put to the vote by the group Smart & Safe Florida, which was mainly supported by the marijuana company Trulieve. Trulieve donated more than $100 million to the legalization of marijuana.

The group collected more than 1 million petitions from Florida voters to place the amendment on the ballot.

Now who can use marijuana in Florida?

Only people with a medical marijuana card can purchase and legally use marijuana in Florida. In 2016, state voters approved medical marijuana through a constitutional amendment.

To obtain a medical card, patients must undergo an in-person examination by a doctor and be diagnosed with at least one qualifying medical condition. Such conditions include things like cancer, epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic, non-malignant pain, or other medical conditions “of the same class.”

A medical marijuana card costs $75 each time it is issued or renewed, and patients must also pay for the cost of seeing a doctor, who determines how much marijuana a patient can purchase.

In opposing Amendment 3, DeSantis said Florida already has legal marijuana. He said he knows not all of Florida’s more than 880,000 medical marijuana patients have “debilitating illnesses.”

“If you really want it in Florida, you can get it now,” he said.

Can groups try again?

Yes. If marijuana advocates wanted to try again for legal weed in a new election cycle, they could.

It’s happened before. In 2014, a ballot measure that would have allowed medical marijuana failed. In 2016, a similar constitutional amendment was passed allowing medical use. John Morgan, the deep-rooted Florida attorney and cannabis advocate, pushed for both ballot initiatives.

The campaign behind Amendment 3 has raised more than $150 million, the vast majority of which came from Trulieve.

Florida lawmakers have already made the ballot initiative process more difficult and expensive in recent years. And it could get even harder. DeSantis’ The election security bureau has called for changes to the petition process, though the state remained tight-lipped about what those specific changes might be.

Can Marijuana Become Federally Legal?

Former President Donald Trump, a Florida voter, said he would vote in favor of Amendment 3. Trump said he thinks it is “time to end the unnecessary arrests and incarcerations of adults for small amounts of marijuana for personal use.”

But Trump hasn’t said he would legalize marijuana nationally if elected.

Kamala Harris has said that if he is elected president, she would legalize recreational marijuana.

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