Unfortunate news broke yesterday. Florida residents will not have the option to vote on the legalization of recreational marijuana. A legal group, Make It Legal Florida, said that they are dropping their 2020 proposal and putting their focus on the 2022 ballot for state legalization.

Despite strong support, this decision means that Florida, for now, is falling behind in the marijuana legalization debate. As of January 1st, there are now 10 states that have legal marijuana. The likes of which include Alaska, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Nevada, Vermont, and Washington.

This year, 8 more states are putting the legalization of weed in their state up to the challenge. These states are Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Dakota, and South Dakota.

The silver lining is that in 2016, Florida joined the list of 33 states which have legal medicinal marijuana.

According to the chairman of Make it Legal Florida, Nick Hansen, the ballot initiative to get legalization of weed on the ballot gathered more than 700,000 signatures, but a narrow time frame to submit and verify the signatures encouraged the organization to focus on moving it to the 2022 ballot.

My opinion, I feel my tin hat creeping on, but that seems like a rather weak excuse for it not being placed on the ballot. Something like this requires more digging, but for the excuse of an organization to say “we needed more time”, leads me to believe that other powers and strings were at play to influence the group to back off. Stay strong Florida.

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