Who’s Pushing Pot and Abortion in Florida—and Why?
Florida constitutional amendments reveal a national strategy in a statewide vote
This report originally appeared in Restoration of America News, and is reprinted here with permission.
Though everyone’s eyes are on national and state races, certain state referenda can be as politically influential in the short and long term to both a state and the nation. This November, Florida has not one but two of these referenda on the ballot: Amendment 3 legalizing recreational marijuana and Amendment 4 expanding the limits of legal abortion.
The fate of these amendments to the state constitution matter. Should Democratic proponents of both referenda get their way in one of America’s largest conservative states, they’ll be encouraged to redouble their efforts elsewhere. What’s more, those Republicans, among them President Trump, who are inching back from both issues to appeal to moderate and youth voters, will redouble their retreat.
So it’s important to state that these amendments would be disastrous policy choices put in place by groups who represent big money or ideological interests. Passing them will create obvious adverse effects and also reward and strengthen those interests, making both amendments a lose-lose for voters.
Marijuana and “the Pot King,” Biden Crony John Morgan
The pot amendment is the biggest threat—insidiously crippling to society and helpful to interests who speak the language of democracy but are anything but democratic. Digging into its backers shows, in particular, the presence of John Morgan, a prominent and plugged-in Biden ally and Florida Democratic powerbroker who, like Biden, speaks the language of “regular folks” while pushing policies that undercut voters. Morgan’s support for recreational marijuana goes back many years, to the point where media outlets call him “Pot Daddy.” His strategy appears to be “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” He has pushed for legalizing recreational marijuana for almost a decade, since 2016, when he spent $6.5 million of his own money, and shows no signs of slowing down.
What might be most offensive about Morgan’s push is that he uses his signature “regular folks” style to cast marijuana use as an issue of common-sense rather than what it really is—a potential public health emergency. Marijuana is a different vice than alcohol or cigarettes or prostitution, and it’s different than most illnesses: it changes peoples’ mental makeups when they use it.
Studies over the past few years have shown the effects of marijuana use—including psychosis, schizophrenia, and depression. They’ve also shown a concrete danger on the road: in Colorado since marijuana was legalized, traffic deaths where the driver tested positive for marijuana have increased 138 percent even as all Colorado traffic deaths increased 29 percent. Plus, marijuana is addictive, e.g. 30 percent of users use “compulsively” and pot dispensaries attract crime. Both facts have led former proponents of legalization in places like New York to retract their support in the opinion pages of The New York Times.
But the danger to the public goes further, since people who aren’t in their right mind tend to be more distracted and more eager to farm out their self-government to administrators and experts. In this sense marijuana legalization is part of Democrats’ general approach to government: give people more rights to self-expression, and put them into a recreationally drugged state, in exchange for them allocating power with unaccountable actors, in this case marijuana corporations and state regulators.
When it comes to the immediate motives of Amendment 3’s backers, the link between traffic fatalities and recreational marijuana in particular is suggestive: in the eyes of opponents of Amendment 3, it’s not a coincidence that John Morgan is a personal injury attorney who will stand to benefit from increased deaths on the road. And Morgan is not the only player who’s lined up behind the amendment with interests of its own to advance. Trulieve, the medical marijuana company whose political donations in 2024 make it a de facto arm of the Democratic Party, has spent millions on pro-legalization ads featuring John Morgan this summer alone.
Polling suggests a majority of Floridians support the Amendment, though not yet the 60 percent that will make it into law. But, interestingly, on the street in Miami, a place that doesn’t mind a little crazy, attitudes toward pot legalization are ambivalent or negative. “We’re crazy enough down here, are you kidding me?” says one source, who seems like the type not to mind: he works in a dive bar and performance venue, lives in Miami Beach, and spends his off-days driving his motorcycle up and down the coast highway. “We don’t need to be allowed to do more stuff.” But for Democrats, particularities of location don’t matter. For the party of national power, one size always fits all, for every state and city.
Abortion and the Attacks on Doctors, Family, and Pro-Lifers
The abortion amendment is noteworthy mainly for its extremism—extremism that makes a mockery of the moderate positions most Americans have on the issue. Indeed, most Americans have reasoned ambivalence about abortion. This is why, for better or worse, most support a 15 week ban. Florida at first had a 15 week ban, tightened in 2023 to six weeks. Amendment 4 has been justified, by The Miami Herald’s editorial board, for the “simple reason” that it overturns the 6 week ban. But provisions of the new amendment go much further—touching on the medical profession and family life and trying to redefine both.
The amendment states abortion rights cannot not be banned, delayed or restricted up to the point of viability, roughly the same standard used in Roe v. Wade. Abortions after that would only be allowed “when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider.” But, as The Miami Herald admits, the Amendment’s use of the term “healthcare provider” leaves a large amount of room for non-doctors to make this determination. This raises the question, as principled opponents of the bill like State Rep. David Borrero have pointed out, of who exactly will be responsible for determining when to terminate the life of a living being. Never mind the overly broad use of “necessary” and what that could entail.
The Amendment also, as The Herald also admits, “allows lawmakers to require only parental notification”—not consent—when it comes to minors, a direct and familiar attack on the traditional family unit.
The Herald dismisses these details as minor next to Florida’s “radical” 6 week ban. Reasonable people can disagree about what radical means—and, again, a majority of Florida voters seem open to that argument. But what The Herald is deeply dishonest about is what it doesn’t call radical. The Amendment’s provisions diminishing doctors’ and parents’ authority are clearly radical—and both are long-running features of Democratic healthcare and abortion policy. So are prominent Florida Democrat groups’ like Miami Against Fascism’s support of intimidation tactics against pro-life groups like Heartbeat of Miami: a pregnancy care center in Hialeah.
Founded and run by Martha E. Avila, Heartbeat of Miami exists to provide an option other than abortion to women in a city whose culture, thanks to its Latin American immigrant population, is deeply Roman Catholic. For its troubles it was vandalized by, among others, Caleb Freestone, a local activist who last surfaced intimidating anti-masking activists who were taking on the United Teachers of Dade. According to Miami activist and researcher Isabella (“Bella”) Rodriguez, Freestone’s legal support fund was boosted by the local and influential antifascist group Miami Against Fascism—the full range of whose activities will be addressed in another Restoration report.
The Dangers Ahead
Even if the amendments are defeated, their threat still looms. The problem with the “if at first you don’t succeed approach,” which Democrats like Morgan have perfected, is that, sometimes, it eventually works. Democrats’ bet is that traditional values will get eroded over time, and that, in a changed environment, their radical proposals will look less extreme. Trends supporting their bet seem to be happening in Florida, at least in the South of the state, where rapid real estate development is creating a new population.
These people aren’t from Florida, and how long they’ll stay will likely depend on how much they like the weather; whether their home states (New York, California, Illinois) become marginally livable again; and whether encouragement for the current building boom continues to come from city and state governments. But they have the potential to reshape the area in a liberal-progressive direction. New York and California are cases in point. There, big-money growth has brought in workers, both upper-income company men and women as well as lower-income service workers, who spend money on “experiences” and “entertainment”: cosmopolitan individuals who seem to have no inherited values to uphold.
Right now, many new Floridians are political refugees: Republicans come south. But others, particularly those workers brought in by corporate relocation, are often fiscally moderate but socially liberal. In a few years, if trends hold, Florida Republicans energized by the DeSantis Administration’s social policies may see their voting base replaced by people who, in the name of inclusivity or equality or self-expression, will politely take the Miami Against Fascism and John Morgan line. And, to paraphrase the line of many conservative Miami activists concerned about this very outcome, if Florida goes this way, so goes the nation.