Is hemp the enemy of Florida’s adult-use marijuana initiative?

Florida hemp businesses are lining up to oppose an adult-use marijuana legalization initiative that will appear on the state’s November ballot, according to campaign finance forms and MJBizDaily interviews.

They’re aggrieved by what they say is a monopoly play for a future adult-use market deliberately engineered by marijuana multistate operators.

And with more than 10,000 hemp businesses registered in the state – compared with a few dozen large marijuana companies – hemp operators opposed to Amendment 3 believe they have enough money and votes to defeat the recreational marijuana measure largely funded by Tallahassee-based MSO Trulieve Cannabis.

In response, advocates for regulated marijuana operators say the hemp firms are being used as pawns in a game played by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who will move to squash intoxicating hemp products as soon as the adult-use measure is beaten back.

Amendment 3, which would grant first-mover status to licensed medical marijuana operators in Florida, a potentially multibillion-dollar adult-use market, is already the most expensive adult-use legalization campaign in U.S. history, with $61.6 million and counting contributed toward the effort to date, according to the most recent disclosure records.

The vast majority of that – nearly $55 million – comes from Tallahassee-based Trulieve Cannabis; the next-biggest donor, Curaleaf Holdings, has contributed $2 million.

A spokesperson for the Smart & Safe Florida campaign did not respond to several MJBizDaily requests for comment.

Patrick O’Brien, principal of Apopka, Florida-based hemp company Chronic Guru, last month donated $100,000 to the Florida Freedom Fund, a DeSantis-controlled political action committee formed to defeat both Amendment 3 as well as an abortion-rights measure.

O’Brien, who also runs cannabis trade school Sativa University and the organization SaveFLHemp.org, did not return MJBizDaily‘s call seeking comment.

Florida hemp companies have pledged to raise an additional $5 million to defeat Amendment 3, which DeSantis railed against during a speech at the recent Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

That money will be donated to the Florida’s Republican Party.

Exactly how much hemp companies have contributed is unknown: State records do not include donations made in the past month; those will be reflected after the next reporting deadline.

The hemp companies’ pledge followed DeSantis’ surprise June veto of a proposed law that would have strictly regulated hemp products in the state.

The sequence of events raised suspicions of a quid pro quo arrangement in which hemp operators would oppose Amendment 3 – which DeSantis also opposes – as political payback for his veto.

Both the hemp companies and the DeSantis administration have denied the existence of any such deal.

Instead, as several operators told MJBizDaily, the opposition is merely the natural response to an existential threat.

It was regulated marijuana companies, after all, that advocated loudly for the hemp restrictions.

And it’s regulated marijuana companies that would benefit most if competition from hemp were outlawed.

State law requires 60% of voters to support a ballot initiative, a uniquely high threshold that would have defeated legalization in states such as Ohio, which voted last fall to legalize adult-use marijuana.

If hemp retailers motivate their customers and employees to vote against Amendment 3, that could tip the scales, hemp operators argue.

And that’s what they plan to do.

“Everyone is focusing on the money,” Ernie Ciaccio, owner of Honest PP&D, an Orlando-based hemp manufacturer, told MJBizDaily.

“Nobody is focusing on the 100,000 employees, the boots on the ground educating clients at the stores.”

Ciaccio pointed to the more than 10,000 businesses registered with the state of Florida to sell hemp products, according to St. Petersburg-based Spectrum Bay News 9.

By contrast, only 25 companies in the state are licensed as vertically integrated medical marijuana treatment centers (MMTC), which allow holders to operate an unlimited number of dispensaries.

State regulators were required by law to have issued almost two-dozen additional permits by now, but they have yet to do so – and have not indicated when they might.

In contrast to marijuana legalization proposals in other states, Amendment 3 does not require the Florida Legislature to issue any more new licenses.

It also does not legalize home cultivation of cannabis, nor are there any social equity programs or provisions to allow small businesses to enter the marijuana industry.

“This isn’t really a battle of (marijuana) and hemp, per se,” Ciaccio added.

“The battle is really small business against a couple of giants who have been trying to put us out of business for many years.”

Hemp companies opposing marijuana legalization is a bad look, said David Culver, senior vice president of public affairs at the U.S. Cannabis Council, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying for regulated marijuana companies, including several of the MSOs active in Florida.

DeSantis’ surprise veto of proposed restrictions on hemp products is deluding hemp operators into thinking the governor is an ally, marijuana industry critics argue.

“The optics certainly are not good,” Culver said in a statement emailed to MJBizDaily.

“Gov. DeSantis is raising millions from makers of unregulated intoxicating hemp products in an effort to block Florida’s Amendment 3, which would implement a carefully regulated adult-use cannabis program.

“If Gov. DeSantis has his way, adults will have easy access to unregulated, potentially dangerous intoxicating hemp products, but they will continue to have to jump through numerous hoops in order to buy safe, legal cannabis.”

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Smaller-scale legalization advocates such as Christopher Cano, an Air Force veteran and the co-founder of Tampa-based Suncoast NORML, also are siding with Amendment 3.

“For all the shortcomings, the amendment does one thing: It ends marijuana arrests in Florida,” he said, noting the 66,000 charges prosecutors filed last year for possession of small amounts of the drug.

Whatever happens with Amendment 3, Cano said, the logical future is one where laws allow hemp and marijuana companies to coexist.

“We believe there’s space for both a regulated hemp industry and a robust adult-use and medical marijuana industry in the state of Florida,” he said.

“We believe competition is the best thing for all, and that’s the problem: There really is no competition in Florida.”

For the state’s hemp operators, competition is at the heart of the matter.

State medical marijuana law allows few players into the regulated market.

Amendment 3 does nothing to change that imbalance, instead enshrining it for adult use and rewarding those who managed to enter during the medical marijuana era.

“For us, it would be great to have equal footing (with medical marijuana) and let the consumer choose,” said Arby Barroso, a Fort Lauderdale-based partner at Arvida Labs, a Florida hemp product manufacturer.

Arvida plans to organize about $250,000 in contributions toward defeating Amendment 3, Barroso said.

“We love the plant,” he added. “This has nothing to do with the plant.

“How can we support an amendment that gives no freedom to thousands of small businesses?”

Chris Roberts can be reached at chris.roberts@mjbizdaily.com.