How $10 Million Meant for Florida Taxpayers Ended Up in the Anti-Marijuana War

A $10 million payment tied to a Florida Medicaid settlement moved through the Hope Florida Foundation, into two anti-drug nonprofits, and then into a political committee fighting marijuana legalization. Public filings also show a major funding surge at SAM Action during the same period. The full picture remains incomplete, but the overlap, timing, and money trail raise serious questions.

Two months before Florida voters decided the fate of marijuana legalization, $10 million tied to a Medicaid overbilling settlement quietly resurfaced in a campaign to keep cannabis illegal.

The money, drawn from a $67 million settlement with the state’s largest Medicaid contractor, moved through a charity founded by First Lady Casey DeSantis and then to two nonprofits with close ties to Governor Ron DeSantis’s political orbit. Within days, $8.5 million landed in political committees fighting Amendment 3, the marijuana legalization ballot measure, according to state campaign finance records and documents obtained by the Associated Press.

The amendment failed to reach the required 60% supermajority in November 2024, though 56% of Florida voters supported it.

One of those nonprofits, Save Our Society From Drugs, a little-known St. Petersburg organization with less than $50,000 in assets, received $5 million and transferred 95% of it to a political committee within days.

Recent reporting has exposed how the DeSantis administration steered millions tied to the settlement into the political fight over marijuana. But an examination of tax filings, corporate records and financial disclosures suggests the public record may tell a broader story about prohibition networks, financial overlap and unanswered questions around who funded the anti-legalization push during a critical election year.

What appears at first glance to be a Florida campaign finance scandal looks more complicated when placed next to national prohibition groups. Save Our Society From Drugs is closely affiliated with Smart Approaches to Marijuana, the nation’s leading anti-legalization lobbying organization, whose 501(c)(4) arm reported receiving $8.6 million in contributions in 2024, a 445% increase from the prior year, according to its Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service.

The overlap raises questions that remain unanswered. But public records reviewed by High Times do not show that Save Our Society From Drugs transferred any portion of the Hope Florida grant directly to Smart Approaches to Marijuana or SAM Action, and this article does not assert that such a transfer occurred.

The flow of funds is documented in state records, sworn testimony and investigative reporting tied to the Florida House inquiry.

On Sept. 27, 2024, Florida reached a $67 million settlement with Centene Corporation, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor, over allegations the company had overbilled the state. The settlement agreement directed $10 million of that total to the Hope Florida Foundation, a charitable organization founded by First Lady Casey DeSantis to support her signature welfare initiative.

Within weeks, Hope Florida Foundation made two $5 million grants, according to foundation chairman Joshua Hay’s testimony to state investigators. One went to Secure Florida’s Future, a nonprofit controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce. The other went to Save Our Society From Drugs.

Both organizations then transferred a combined $8.5 million to Keep Florida Clean, a political action committee, state campaign finance records show. Keep Florida Clean was chaired by James Uthmeier, who at the time served as Governor Ron DeSantis’s chief of staff and is now Florida’s attorney general.

Text messages obtained by the Associated Press show that Uthmeier helped connect Amy Ronshausen, executive director of Save Our Society From Drugs, to the grant process. According to the AP timeline and the House inquiry, those contacts began before the foundation’s board had been formally notified that the $10 million was coming.

“Can you send me wire instructions?” Jeff Aaron, the foundation’s attorney, wrote to Ronshausen on Oct. 18, 2024, according to text messages shared with the AP.

On Oct. 22, 2024, Hope Florida Foundation wired $5 million to Save Our Society From Drugs, Hay told investigators. The next day, Save Our Society donated $1.6 million to Keep Florida Clean, followed by $3.15 million more in the following days, according to Florida Division of Elections records.

In total, Save Our Society transferred $4.75 million of the $5 million it received, 95% of the grant, to the political committee within days of receiving it.

Keep Florida Clean subsequently sent more than $10 million to the Republican Party of Florida and over $1 million to the Florida Freedom Fund, Governor DeSantis’s personal political committee, campaign finance records show.

The Leon County State Attorney opened a grand jury investigation in 2025. State Representative Alex Andrade, the Republican who led the Florida House investigation, has alleged that the transactions could amount to money laundering and wire fraud. No charges had been filed as of publication.

Save Our Society From Drugs operates as the lobbying arm of the Drug Free America Foundation, a larger nonprofit organization founded in 1987 by Mel and Betty Sembler, according to the foundation’s corporate filing. Both organizations share the same address, 333 3rd Ave. N., Suite 200, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, and the same executive director, according to their respective websites, public profiles and tax filings.

That executive director, Amy Ronshausen, has longstanding ties to Smart Approaches to Marijuana. Ronshausen has appeared at SAM events and, in February 2025, spoke at SAM’s Good Drug Policy Summit in Washington alongside SAM president Kevin Sabet and members of Congress, according to SAM’s own materials.

Similarly, Sabet has been announced as the keynote speaker at the Drug Free America Foundation’s 2026 National Prevention Summit, according to the foundation’s website.

The overlap extends beyond speaking engagements. The National Drug-Free Workplace Alliance, described on its website as a division of Drug Free America Foundation, lists Smart Approaches to Marijuana among its partner organizations for substance abuse policy and prevention.

Save Our Society From Drugs also has a documented history of funding anti-marijuana campaigns. In 2016, the organization gave more than $1 million to fight legalization initiatives in multiple states, as it had done previously in Colorado.

The relationships described here show overlap in personnel, addresses, public events and advocacy networks, but do not by themselves establish coordination on any specific transaction unless otherwise documented.

The timing of Save Our Society’s $5 million grant coincides with an unusual pattern in the financial filings of Smart Approaches to Marijuana’s lobbying arm.

SAM Action, the organization’s 501(c)(4) entity, reported $8,601,743 in contributions for 2024, according to its Form 990 filed with the IRS. That represents a 445% increase from the $1,576,210 the organization reported receiving in 2023.

Meanwhile, SAM Inc., the related 501(c)(3) educational organization, experienced a sharp financial decline. Its 2024 Form 990 shows revenues fell 64% to $1.2 million, while expenses increased 59% to $2.26 million. The organization operated at a loss of more than $1 million and reported $656,395 in legal fees, nearly 30% of its total budget.

Despite the financial distress at SAM Inc., SAM Action reported holding $23.04 million in net assets, according to its 2024 Form 990.

Tax law protects the identities of donors to 501(c)(4) organizations like SAM Action. The donor information is contained in Schedule B of the organization’s Form 990, which is redacted from public view.

Save Our Society From Drugs’ most recent publicly available tax filing, from 2023, shows the organization had just $43,125 in net assets and operated at a loss of $84,795, according to the Form 990 filed with the IRS in March 2024 and available through ProPublica.

The $5 million the organization received from Hope Florida in October 2024 represented more than 100 times its previous net assets. Of that amount, $4.75 million went to Keep Florida Clean. The disposition of the remaining $250,000 is not documented in currently available public records.

The 2024 Form 990 for Save Our Society From Drugs, which would show how the organization spent the $5 million, is not publicly available yet.

The controversy became public in early 2025, when the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times reported on the diversion of Medicaid settlement funds.

The Florida House Health Care Budget Subcommittee, led by Representative Andrade, launched an investigation. In contentious hearings, state officials defended the transactions while Andrade accused them of misappropriating public funds.

“Instead of taking the settlement money that was paid by this large company and putting it back into the state coffers, they said, $10 million of what you owe us, just give it to the Hope Florida Foundation,” Andrade said in an April 10, 2025 podcast interview, as reported by multiple outlets.

The investigation ended abruptly in late April 2025 after key witnesses refused to cooperate and Hope Florida Foundation officials declined to appear at scheduled hearings.

The fallout was swift. James Holton, chairman of Save Our Society From Drugs’ board of directors, resigned on May 15, 2025, saying in his resignation letter that he had been unaware the organization accepted $5 million from Hope Florida Foundation or that it subsequently donated millions to a political committee, according to reporting by the Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald.

“I learned about the transactions in news reports,” Holton wrote, calling for “a thorough investigation and audits” of the organization.

Ronshausen was suspended from her position on April 22, 2025, according to a whistleblower complaint she filed with the board on May 7, 2025, as reported by Florida Politics. In the complaint, Ronshausen said her suspension was retaliation for questioning the board’s choice of legal counsel.

The suspension came six weeks after Ronshausen had been honored at the Governor’s Mansion as a “Florida Hero” for her “efforts to combat drug legalization” and her “key role in grassroots campaigns, including successfully defeating Florida’s proposed Amendment 3 in 2024,” according to the March 28, 2025 reception program obtained by the Orlando Sentinel.

In a letter to House Speaker Daniel Perez, Ronshausen disputed Andrade’s characterization of events, saying she had been pressured to testify and that Andrade had misrepresented her statements. She specifically denied that Uthmeier had directed her on how to use the Hope Florida grant funds.

“At no time has James Uthmeier directed me or SOS on how to use funds received from an entirely appropriate grant from Hope Florida,” Ronshausen wrote, according to her April 25, 2025 letter published by Florida Politics.

Andrade told Florida Politics that Ronshausen’s claims were false. “Nothing she said in that letter happened,” he said.

Several key questions remain unanswered.

Public records do not show whether Save Our Society From Drugs donated any portion of the $5 million Hope Florida grant to Smart Approaches to Marijuana or SAM Action. The 2024 Form 990 for Save Our Society, which would detail how the organization spent the money, is not publicly available yet.

The sources of SAM Action’s $8.6 million in 2024 contributions also remain unknown. Federal tax law shields the identities of donors to 501(c)(4) organizations, and SAM has consistently refused to voluntarily disclose this information.

Kevin Sabet, president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, has previously stated that the organization does not accept money from pharmaceutical companies, prison guard unions, or other industries with financial interests in prohibition.

“We get all of our money for these campaigns from individual donors, many people who lost family members to drug abuse, including from marijuana,” Sabet told Vice News in 2016.

But the organization has consistently refused to voluntarily disclose its donors, fighting state-level transparency requirements. In 2019, SAM opposed New York state laws requiring donor disclosure, according to public reporting and lobbying records.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana Action actively campaigned against Amendment 3 in Florida. In October 2024, the organization launched television advertisements featuring former U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy warning about marijuana lollipops and “stoned drivers.”

The exact amount SAM Action spent on the Florida campaign is not disclosed in available public records.

The financial ties between the various organizations involved in the Florida scandal extend across multiple states and involve figures with long histories in drug policy advocacy.

Late Mel Sembler, who co-founded Drug Free America Foundation with his wife Betty, donated $1 million to fight marijuana legalization in Florida in 2016.

Sembler, a former U.S. ambassador and major Republican fundraiser, also co-founded Straight Inc., a controversial “troubled teen” drug rehabilitation program that former participants have described as abusive.

Save Our Society From Drugs was founded by Betty Sembler in 1998 as the lobbying arm of Drug Free America Foundation, according to the foundation’s website and public records. The organization is registered as a 501(c)(4) in Florida and engages in lobbying activities, according to its own website.

The connection between Drug Free America Foundation and Smart Approaches to Marijuana runs through multiple organizational channels. The National Drug-Free Workplace Alliance, described on its website as “a division of Drug Free America Foundation,” lists Smart Approaches to Marijuana among its partner organizations. Both organizations also collaborate through the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, a national coalition prevention network that has provided funding to SAM in the past.

The Semblers also had connections to the Church of Scientology, which maintains its headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, less than 10 miles from the Drug Free America Foundation offices. Ronshausen was interviewed in 2016 by Freedom Magazine, a Church of Scientology publication, about her work opposing marijuana legalization.

These connections reflect decades of institutional overlap in drug war activism and prevention programming, though public records reviewed by High Times do not establish coordination on any specific marijuana ballot measure beyond the relationships and activities documented above.

The grand jury investigation continues in Leon County, though Attorney General Uthmeier, who chaired Keep Florida Clean and has been identified in reporting and legislative inquiries as helping coordinate aspects of the transfers, now heads the office that would typically handle such matters.

State Representative Andrade has called for Uthmeier to recuse himself, but the attorney general has maintained that he had no involvement in the settlement negotiations or the Hope Florida Foundation grants.

The Florida Legislature defunded the Office of Hope Florida within the Florida Department of Education in June 2025, according to news reports, though the Hope Florida Foundation continues to operate as a private charity.

U.S. Representatives Kathy Castor and Darren Soto have requested a federal investigation by the Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services into the “unlawful diversion of Medicaid funds in Florida,” according to a letter they sent in May 2025.

For marijuana reform advocates, the scandal has exposed what they describe as a well-funded network of prohibition organizations that operate largely out of public view.

The 2024 financial filings from Smart Approaches to Marijuana Action, showing an unprecedented surge in contributions during the same period that millions of dollars moved through Florida’s anti-marijuana network, raise obvious questions. They do not, on the public record alone, answer all of them.

What the Florida case exposes, at minimum, is how public money can move through private entities in ways that complicate accountability, blur political and charitable lines, and keep the true sources of influence out of public view.

Editor’s note: This article is based on public records, campaign finance disclosures, IRS filings, corporate records and linked reporting. Where facts remain disputed or unproven, that is stated in the text.

This article is a reported analysis. The commentary, views or interpretations expressed do not imply that any uncharged conduct has been proven in court unless explicitly stated. Readers are encouraged to review the underlying materials and draw their own conclusions.