John Morgan is a man of his word.
After a narrow defeat in the 2014 election, Morgan, a millionaire Orlando attorney who almost single-handedly bankrolled the Florida MMJ campaign, vowed that the issue would return this year if the legislature didn’t legalize medical cannabis. And on Wednesday, the state Division of Elections announced that Morgan’s group had collected enough signatures to make the ballot again.
“This effort cost millions of dollars – but it needed to happen,” Morgan wrote in an ecstatic email to supporters. “I told you when we came up short in 2014 that we would win the war, and we will. Medical marijuana is coming to Florida.”
People United for Medical Marijuana, the formal political action committee behind the campaign, has so far raised over $3.3 million, much of that from Morgan and his law firm. They’ll likely need several million more to cross the finish line in November, especially given that opposition – as it was in 2014 – could be very well-funded.
But if the amendment passes this time around (it needs a 60% supermajority to win), Florida could quickly become the second-largest MMJ market in the country after California.
