Borderliner
Active member
good luck Florida.
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A Majority Of Florida Voters Support Legalizing Recreational Marijuana
- Thread starter Tudo
- Start date
They're already putting "what went wrong" in the newspapers
Going to Pot
178 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#54
108
Florida was supposed to be the first state in the South to legalize medical marijuana. What went wrong?
By Michael Ames
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#comments
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#http://twitter.com/search?q=http://...arijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html
whatsapp://send/?text=Medical Marij...e_state_may_turn.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_wa_top
</HEADER><!-- /header --><SECTION class=content>
<FIGURE class="image inline " style="WIDTH: 590px; FLOAT: none; MARGIN: 0px auto; DISPLAY: block">
<FIGCAPTION class=caption>John Morgan speaks at a news conference during his "Yes on 2" campaign in favor of a proposed state constitutional amendment to allow medical marijuana, in Gainesville, Florida, on Sept. 26, 2014.</FIGCAPTION> Photo by Bill Countrell/Reuters
</FIGURE>
Florida was supposed to change the way the South thinks about medical marijuana. In late July, a full 88 percent of the state supported legalizing medical cannabis, and in early October 67 percent supported Amendment 2 specifically.* Instead, that wide margin has all but disappeared, and rather than join the 23 other states with similar laws on the books, the amendment appears to be bleeding support by the hour.
<ASIDE class=pullquote> “What the hell happened?”
State Rep. Katie Edwards</ASIDE>
A private trend poll commissioned by an out-of-state company has shown a clear downward tick in the final week before Election Day, and a Tampa Bay Times “insiders poll” of state political experts has more than 80 percent expecting a loss. It’s still too close to call, but if the initiative fails on Tuesday, Florida will make a different sort of history: It will be the largest state to ever reject legal medical marijuana by popular vote.
“It seemed like we had the prime opportunity for Florida to do something novel and different,” said state Rep. Katie Edwards, a Democrat from Broward County who co-sponsored a successful, but more limited, compassion law for severely sick patients earlier this year. “So what the hell happened?”
Advertisement
Opinions and frustrations over the amendment’s nosedive are not in short supply,and blame is already being widely ascribed. But in conversations with those involved, one common culprit is revealed: dysfunctional partisanship.
United for Care, the group promoting the amendment, is a strictly Democratic affair, and the campaign’s financial burden has been carried almost entirely by one man—Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan, a household name in Florida for his ubiquitous television commercials.
Morgan has made compassion a hallmark of his “Yes on 2” campaign, and he points to his brother, who was paralyzed from the chest down at 18 years old and suffers from chronic pain and spasms, as an example of a patient in need. Nevertheless, the campaign that Morgan has bankrolled with roughly $4 million of his own money has become inseparable from party politics and Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor who happens to work at Morgan’s Orlando law firm.
<CENTER style="OVERFLOW: hidden; HEIGHT: 0px; WIDTH: auto; MARGIN: auto; DISPLAY: block">
</CENTER> Since it launched, Florida Republicans have suspected that Morgan’s campaign is actually an effort to pump voter turnout in an off-year election and help Crist eke out a win against incumbent Gov. Rick Scott. Morgan denies he’s playing politics, telling the Tampa Tribunethat he’s “not as smart or devious as they think I am.” And yet, when he hired a campaign manager, he picked Ben Pollara, an operative who describes himself as “one of the premier Democratic fundraisers in Florida.” Pollara served on President Obama’s 2012 National Finance Committee, was the state finance director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, and has represented Democrats including Sen. Bill Nelson, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“It has not been a bipartisan campaign,” says Pollara. “The opposition has been run entirely by Republican operatives and funded by Republican mega-donors.”
Indeed, Pollara is now in the unenviable position of running a campaign against Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas business tycoon who in 2012 spent more money than any single person has ever spent on an American election. On May 29, Adelson sent $2.5 million to the Drug Free Florida Committee and to date has contributed $5 million, or 85 percent of the total budget against the measure. Some speculate that Adelson’s interest is personal; the Adelsons lost a son to a drug overdose in 2005. Others think he is simply trying to turn out conservative voters to help Gov. Scott. Regardless, according to Stephen Gutwillig at the Drug Policy Alliance, Adelson has made this the most well-funded drug policy campaign, ever.
“It’s very unusual for an issue with such widespread mainstream support,” Gutwillig said, citing the surge in national approval of medical cannabis.
The “No on 2” campaign has spent most of its windfall on a deluge of television ads that started running statewide at the end of September, about a month after August polling detected a falloff in support. The ads are savvy—dressing up tiny decontextualized bits of fact with a high gloss of exaggeration and fear-mongering. “It’s hard enough to reach Florida’s supermajority without an onslaught of misleading ads,” says Gutwillig.
What makes the entire struggle over Amendment 2 harder to understand is that there was strong bipartisan support for medicinal marijuana in the state even a few months ago. In March, two young state representatives, Republican Matt Gaetz, 32, and Democrat, Katie Edwards, 33, teamed up to sponsor the Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act. The law, which Gaetz characterized as “a bipartisan effort from start to finish,” permits certain high-CBD and low-THC strains to be prescribed for children and adults with epilepsy, cancer, and other chronic conditions. The bill sailed through the Republican-controlled legislature.
“I do believe that cannabis is medicine,” said Gaetz, a panhandle conservative. “I support a more modern cannabis policy in my state, and I am the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee.” But he never supported the Amendment 2 ballot initiative. “Mostly because I wasn’t really involved in the creation of Amendment 2.”
Pollara never reached out to Gaetz, the key pro-cannabis Republican in the state. “We have not really been pursuing endorsements from elected officials,” Pollara explained. “Most people have no idea who their state representative and state senator are, much less care what they think about medical marijuana.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...arijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html
Going to Pot
178 http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#54
108
Florida was supposed to be the first state in the South to legalize medical marijuana. What went wrong?
By Michael Ames
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#comments
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...rijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html#http://twitter.com/search?q=http://...arijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html
whatsapp://send/?text=Medical Marij...e_state_may_turn.html?wpsrc=sh_all_mob_wa_top
</HEADER><!-- /header --><SECTION class=content>
<FIGURE class="image inline " style="WIDTH: 590px; FLOAT: none; MARGIN: 0px auto; DISPLAY: block">
</FIGURE>
Florida was supposed to change the way the South thinks about medical marijuana. In late July, a full 88 percent of the state supported legalizing medical cannabis, and in early October 67 percent supported Amendment 2 specifically.* Instead, that wide margin has all but disappeared, and rather than join the 23 other states with similar laws on the books, the amendment appears to be bleeding support by the hour.
<ASIDE class=pullquote> “What the hell happened?”
State Rep. Katie Edwards</ASIDE>
A private trend poll commissioned by an out-of-state company has shown a clear downward tick in the final week before Election Day, and a Tampa Bay Times “insiders poll” of state political experts has more than 80 percent expecting a loss. It’s still too close to call, but if the initiative fails on Tuesday, Florida will make a different sort of history: It will be the largest state to ever reject legal medical marijuana by popular vote.
“It seemed like we had the prime opportunity for Florida to do something novel and different,” said state Rep. Katie Edwards, a Democrat from Broward County who co-sponsored a successful, but more limited, compassion law for severely sick patients earlier this year. “So what the hell happened?”
Advertisement
Opinions and frustrations over the amendment’s nosedive are not in short supply,and blame is already being widely ascribed. But in conversations with those involved, one common culprit is revealed: dysfunctional partisanship.
United for Care, the group promoting the amendment, is a strictly Democratic affair, and the campaign’s financial burden has been carried almost entirely by one man—Orlando trial lawyer John Morgan, a household name in Florida for his ubiquitous television commercials.
Morgan has made compassion a hallmark of his “Yes on 2” campaign, and he points to his brother, who was paralyzed from the chest down at 18 years old and suffers from chronic pain and spasms, as an example of a patient in need. Nevertheless, the campaign that Morgan has bankrolled with roughly $4 million of his own money has become inseparable from party politics and Charlie Crist, the Democratic candidate for governor who happens to work at Morgan’s Orlando law firm.
<CENTER style="OVERFLOW: hidden; HEIGHT: 0px; WIDTH: auto; MARGIN: auto; DISPLAY: block">
ADVERTISEMENT
<!-- ebz: no video to display --></CENTER> Since it launched, Florida Republicans have suspected that Morgan’s campaign is actually an effort to pump voter turnout in an off-year election and help Crist eke out a win against incumbent Gov. Rick Scott. Morgan denies he’s playing politics, telling the Tampa Tribunethat he’s “not as smart or devious as they think I am.” And yet, when he hired a campaign manager, he picked Ben Pollara, an operative who describes himself as “one of the premier Democratic fundraisers in Florida.” Pollara served on President Obama’s 2012 National Finance Committee, was the state finance director for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential bid, and has represented Democrats including Sen. Bill Nelson, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“It has not been a bipartisan campaign,” says Pollara. “The opposition has been run entirely by Republican operatives and funded by Republican mega-donors.”
Indeed, Pollara is now in the unenviable position of running a campaign against Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas business tycoon who in 2012 spent more money than any single person has ever spent on an American election. On May 29, Adelson sent $2.5 million to the Drug Free Florida Committee and to date has contributed $5 million, or 85 percent of the total budget against the measure. Some speculate that Adelson’s interest is personal; the Adelsons lost a son to a drug overdose in 2005. Others think he is simply trying to turn out conservative voters to help Gov. Scott. Regardless, according to Stephen Gutwillig at the Drug Policy Alliance, Adelson has made this the most well-funded drug policy campaign, ever.
“It’s very unusual for an issue with such widespread mainstream support,” Gutwillig said, citing the surge in national approval of medical cannabis.
The “No on 2” campaign has spent most of its windfall on a deluge of television ads that started running statewide at the end of September, about a month after August polling detected a falloff in support. The ads are savvy—dressing up tiny decontextualized bits of fact with a high gloss of exaggeration and fear-mongering. “It’s hard enough to reach Florida’s supermajority without an onslaught of misleading ads,” says Gutwillig.
What makes the entire struggle over Amendment 2 harder to understand is that there was strong bipartisan support for medicinal marijuana in the state even a few months ago. In March, two young state representatives, Republican Matt Gaetz, 32, and Democrat, Katie Edwards, 33, teamed up to sponsor the Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act. The law, which Gaetz characterized as “a bipartisan effort from start to finish,” permits certain high-CBD and low-THC strains to be prescribed for children and adults with epilepsy, cancer, and other chronic conditions. The bill sailed through the Republican-controlled legislature.
“I do believe that cannabis is medicine,” said Gaetz, a panhandle conservative. “I support a more modern cannabis policy in my state, and I am the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee.” But he never supported the Amendment 2 ballot initiative. “Mostly because I wasn’t really involved in the creation of Amendment 2.”
Pollara never reached out to Gaetz, the key pro-cannabis Republican in the state. “We have not really been pursuing endorsements from elected officials,” Pollara explained. “Most people have no idea who their state representative and state senator are, much less care what they think about medical marijuana.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...arijuana_why_the_sunshine_state_may_turn.html
imo the yes on 2 tv ads are very few and the no on 2 has outright lies in some tv ads and one ad w/a Dr. explaining that she wont be writing a script for Amendment 2 pot, nor has it went thru any FDA clinical trials and the overall tone that Amendment 2 pot isnt legit. this ad plays all the time and i guess its too complex for UFC to explain in a 30 sec - 2 min tv ad how and why Cannabis is / has not gone thru any fda clinical trials in the u.s. i guess they are unaware of the level of medical research Israel has done on the medical benefits of Cannabis.
its not easy to achieve 60% voter approval and almost impossible w/the ammt of money in polotics.....thank you citizen united ruling.
peace
its not easy to achieve 60% voter approval and almost impossible w/the ammt of money in polotics.....thank you citizen united ruling.
peace
Meh. I don't think the ads really make much difference, other than to people making money off of producing & airing them. It's all geared towards convincing anybody who's not a right wing zealot to just stay home, not vote, because you're already beat, because your vote doesn't matter. If too many people buy that, you are beat. Happens all the time. It's like this-
Paul Weyrich - Goo-Goo Syndrome (proper audio/video synchronization) - YouTube
It's really an issue of turnout, given that most people made up their minds about MJ, particularly MMJ, a long a long time ago.
Right this minute it's showing 57% FOR and 43% against.
If this doesn't change real quick with 89% reporting, it's over for MMJ in Fla.
Further, even if it did pass it also appears that Fla's "beloved" rick scott and his squeeze baby pam bondi are going to be re-elected.
Wow
If this doesn't change real quick with 89% reporting, it's over for MMJ in Fla.
Further, even if it did pass it also appears that Fla's "beloved" rick scott and his squeeze baby pam bondi are going to be re-elected.
Wow
Sounds like they need to amend the law stating that all measures need 60% approval to pass.
I mean really! 1 million more people voted yes than no, and it's a loss?
Floridians need to work on their voting rules.
Never heard of such stupid laws.
Go Oregon!!!!!!
I mean really! 1 million more people voted yes than no, and it's a loss?
Floridians need to work on their voting rules.
Never heard of such stupid laws.
Go Oregon!!!!!!
SG1,
it used to be a 50% or more needed to amend the fl constitution but as voters fl voted to make it a super majority of 60% needed to pass any amendments.
peace
it used to be a 50% or more needed to amend the fl constitution but as voters fl voted to make it a super majority of 60% needed to pass any amendments.
peace
The push to vote "no", and the relentless ads were funded by a multi-billionaire Las Vegas casino owner. He has tremendous liquor sales in his casinos, and liquor makes people gamble more. Pure greed on his part, and guess what? That doctor in the ads is his wife. So she supports alcohol abuse, and gambling, but is against a therapeutic, benign herb. What a scumbag. Who would have thunk it? Yet, 58% of voters supported medical cannabis. The disinformation ads probably made the difference, but to get 60% of people to vote on any issue is a near impossibility, which is part of the reason I never believed this would pass. That, and talking to young people in the street, who were clueless as to the issue at hand, as they toked on their herb. The 20 something demographic are the ones who vote the least, while the oldest people vote the most.
$3.9 mil from Sheldon Adelson, casino owner in Las Vegas, financing vote no on Amd 2 TV ads in Florida? Those ads then way out doing any allotted airtime of the vote yes ads? And then those vote no ads also had actual lies, negative innuendo, and put fear into the viewers? It worked though apparently, but should never have been allowed in the first place.
I think laws may have been broken. A non-resident financing a TV campaign against a constitutional amendment in another state? Fraud at the very least occured. Is it legal for non-residents to finance political voting issues? The whole mmj issue was changed by those ads to legalization fears, like fears of everybody driving while under the influence, or kids using drugs in school, etc. Something really stinks about that. But that's just crazy-ass Florida politics I guess. Not really surprising in the least. Just a shame.
Because the real shame here is that 400,000 sick people will still be denied medicine that could help them.
I think Morgan blew it myself. But he did get it on the ballot in the first place, just lost it after that. But I bet somehow he still stands to profit. He lost Amd2 in his own county and his law partner lost his election too. But somehow Morgan will profit, I'm sure.
I think laws may have been broken. A non-resident financing a TV campaign against a constitutional amendment in another state? Fraud at the very least occured. Is it legal for non-residents to finance political voting issues? The whole mmj issue was changed by those ads to legalization fears, like fears of everybody driving while under the influence, or kids using drugs in school, etc. Something really stinks about that. But that's just crazy-ass Florida politics I guess. Not really surprising in the least. Just a shame.
Because the real shame here is that 400,000 sick people will still be denied medicine that could help them.
I think Morgan blew it myself. But he did get it on the ballot in the first place, just lost it after that. But I bet somehow he still stands to profit. He lost Amd2 in his own county and his law partner lost his election too. But somehow Morgan will profit, I'm sure.
^yup millionnaires are allowed to pump money into other states elections, its total bullshit. just look at Bloomturd and his gun control agenda, they pump millions into CO and WA to influence gun control laws.
sad that florida didn't pass Amd2, i had an old friend in FL who was applying for permits and getting things in motion for a legal dispensary out there. wonder how this changes the game plan for FL?
sad that florida didn't pass Amd2, i had an old friend in FL who was applying for permits and getting things in motion for a legal dispensary out there. wonder how this changes the game plan for FL?
Just EFFING WOW!
Guess there is always 2016!?
Come On PEOPLE! Get the facts! Let's go J. Morgan
The Doktor
Member
I think Ron Paul is going to address that Congress shall not interfere with local governance. Something about "taxation without representation" that always creates a special kind of WTF?
I was talking to the manager of the local hydroponic store about this. He told me that the folks who drafted the amendment would do so again in the next election cycle if the popular vote came over 55%, which it did.
Until then, I guess we have to wait unless the governor (Republican) decides to take action to legalize it himself. A good move IMO since he won reelection by only 1% of the popular vote.
Until then, I guess we have to wait unless the governor (Republican) decides to take action to legalize it himself. A good move IMO since he won reelection by only 1% of the popular vote.
Quite a few people I’ve talked to have been influenced by these bogus ads. Here’s an interesting thing- I’m a former Florida deputy sheriff. In my time on the department, I made dozens of drunk driving arrests and saw my share of drunk driving traffic fatalities. Guess how many cannabis-related auto accidents or traffic fatalities I saw or driving under the influence arrests I made?
Yup, zip, zero, nada.
When I tell them this, they are surprised. I then go on to tell them how many teens I see effed up on K2. Since the big concern is teen usage, I ask whether they’d rather see them smoking K2 or whatever else $#!t is out there, or marijuana, they say neither to which I reply, well, they’re going to smoke either way, so which do you want them smoking?
The arguments against legalization are specious and ill informed.
