Democratic strategists see opportunities to attract Florida voters to the party’s candidates now that constitutional amendment initiatives to legalize recreational marijuana and guarantee broader abortion rights have qualified for the ballot. The Florida Supreme Court announced on April 1 that Amendment 3 to legalize adult-use cannabis and Amendment 4 to protect abortion rights had fulfilled state requirements and would appear on the ballot for this fall’s presidential general election.

If passed, Amendment 3 would legalize cannabis for adults aged 21 and older and allow Florida’s existing licensed medical marijuana retailers to begin serving all adult consumers. Amendment 4 says that “no law shall prohibit, penalize, delay, or restrict abortion before viability or when necessary to protect the patient’s health, as determined by the patient’s healthcare provider,” with an exception for laws that require parental notification when minors get abortions. If passed, the amendment would effectively nullify a separate Supreme Court ruling issued last week that upheld the state’s 15-week limit on abortion and set the stage for approval of a six-week limit.

With 30 electoral votes, both the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns eye Florida as a significant step on the path to victory in November. Democratic strategists see the addition of Amendment 3 and Amendment 4 to the November ballot as an opportunity to attract young voters, who tend to support abortion rights and cannabis policy reform.

“Both abortion and marijuana legalization are highly resonate with young people, which is a key demographic that the president has got to turn out,” Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of the grassroots progressive group Our Revolution, told The Hill. 

Biden Campaign Eyes Florida

On Monday, the Biden campaign released a memo indicating it would invest heavily in Trump’s home state of Florida, saying the policies of the former president and the Republican Party are “making Floridians’ lives worse.” Four years ago, Trump won the Sunshine State with 51% of the vote, while Biden took 48% of the vote.

Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the campaign manager for Biden’s reelection bid, said that the campaign is running ads in Florida targeting young voters and other demographic groups including Black and Hispanic voters. 

“Make no mistake: Florida is not an easy state to win, but it is a winnable one for President Biden, especially given Trump’s weak, cash-strapped campaign, and serious vulnerabilities within his coalition,” she said in the memo.

To win the state, the Biden campaign will have to have a strong showing from Democratic-leaning voting blocks including Black voters and young adults. Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party and an ally of the medical cannabis industry while serving as the state’s commissioner of agriculture, said she has already observed increased enthusiasm among young voters since the court rulings last week.

“Just based purely on watching social media in the last 24 hours, the youth vote is excited about the opportunity to be voting on cannabis and abortion in November,” she said.

Michael Starr Hopkins has experience running Democratic campaigns in Florida, serving as senior advisor for former Congressman Charlie Crist’s unsuccessful bid for governor of the state in 2022. As the country gears up for the November vote, the Democratic strategist sees the views of many Republicans as incompatible with those of most younger voters.

“Abortion and marijuana on the ballot could be an electoral earthquake for the youth vote in Florida. The GOP’s anti-choice, anti-cannabis stance isn’t just out of touch, it’s straight out of the stone age,” said Starr Hopkins. “Having these two hot-button issues front and center is going to turbocharge youth turnout, which is never a good thing for Republicans.”

Democrats See Success in Ohio and Alabama

Democrats see similarities between the situation developing in Florida this year with the 2023 race in Ohio. The ballot for that election included an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana and an amendment to enshrine the “fundamental right to reproductive freedom” with “reasonable limits” in the Ohio Constitution. Propelled in part by a strong turnout of young voters, both ballot measures passed, handing Republican party leaders two losses in one fell swoop.

In Alabama late last month, Democrat Marilyn Lands won a special election for a state House seat after leaning into abortion rights and protecting in vitro fertilization (IVF) as issues for her campaign. Only weeks before, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen human embryos are legally people, leading to a halt of IVF services in the state, at least temporarily.

“Ballot initiatives can be game changing for campaigns. Just last week we saw a Democrat win a state house seat in Alabama focused on IVF, showing the power of the issue in a deep red state,” said Democratic strategist Andrea Riccio, co-founder of Velocity Partners. “With recreational marijuana use and abortion access on the ballot, the Biden campaign has a real opportunity to activate young voters and turn Florida blue.”

Currently, Trump has a 0.8 percentage point lead over Biden overall, according to The Hill and Decision Desk HQ’s aggregation of polls. With weed and abortion on the ballot in Florida, however, Democrats believe they can overcome the deficit in the state, securing its 30 electoral votes for Biden.

“If the GOP keeps underestimating the power of pissed-off young people, they’re in for a rude awakening at the ballot box. Florida could slip from their grasp as cash-strapped Republicans struggle to counter the surge of energized young voters,” said Starr Hopkins. “It’s a perfect storm that could spell disaster for the GOP’s chances in the Sunshine State.”

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Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed six new bills into law on Wednesday, CBS News reports. The bills, in a win for social liberals across the state and country, collectively cover protections for gender-affirming health care, abortion, and cannabis reform. Let’s start by reviewing the cannabis legislation. 

Back in November, Maryland voters approved an amendment to the state’s constitution to allow adults 21 and older to possess up to 1.5 ounces of cannabis legally. 67% of adults voted in favor of the bill, which creates the licensing and tax rates. The tax rate for adult use in Maryland will be 9%.

Legalization is always wonderful, considering it means fewer people in prison. However, looking at mass legal cannabis exoduses from other states such as California, thanks to the red tape, expenses, and hurdles of setting up legally, such bills also admittingly make one think that sometimes the industry legal cannabis helps the most is the black market. 

Recreational cannabis sets up shop in Maryland starting on July 1. The existing medical cannabis dispensaries will receive dual licenses to enter the adult-use market. In addition, in an effort to make amends for the racist casualties of the War on Drugs, priority for additional recreational licenses will be given to minority business owners in communities that have been negatively affected by past marijuana laws. As data from the ACLU shows, despite equal usage rates, Black people are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana. “This will ensure the rollout of recreational cannabis in our state drives opportunity in an equitable way,” Gov. Moore said. “The criminalization of marijuana harmed low-income communities and communities of color in a profound way. We want to make sure the legalization of marijuana lifts those communities now in a profound way.”

Earlier this week, Gov. Moore shut down concerns about his conflicts of interest. He had roughly $1.2 million of stock in a cannabis company, which was transferred into a blind trust managed by Brown Investment Advisory & Trust Company and approved by The State Ethics Commission last week.

Regarding the other bills signed into effect, two measures intend to expand access to affordable health insurance. One will automatically enroll folks into Medicaid who are eligible but not yet signed up in an effort to reduce paperwork and give insurance to an estimated 65,000 uninsured Marylanders. Another bill includes a package of mental health care that aims to get folks help before their mental health concerns become an emergency, such as setting up a suicide and crisis prevention hotline. 

Regarding abortion, in light of Roe v. Wade being overturned, one Maryland bill aims to protect patients and providers from criminal, civil, and administrative penalties relating to abortion bans or restrictions in other states, CBS reports. Another is a data-privacy bill that protects medical and insurance records in electronic health information sharing. Additionally, Gov. Moore signed a bill to ensure that Maryland’s public colleges and universities have a viable plan to give students easy access to emergency contraception and medical abortion (abortion pills). 

Because of restrictive abortion laws in other states, Maryland is becoming a “safe haven state” where people travel to obtain reproductive care unavailable in their hometown. 

And as for gender-affirming health care, one of the six bills regards The Trans Health Equity Act and expands on how many gender-affirming procedures will be covered by Maryland’s Medicaid program. Under the legislation, which goes into effect on January 1, Medicaid will cover additional gender-affirming treatments.

All of the six bills, from cannabis to gender-affirming health care, tie together in a cohesive wellness package. For example, research shows that access to gender-affirming care reduces suicide rates, so ideally, all six bills will make Maryland a safer and healthier place for its residents. 

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The United States Supreme Court last week declined to take up a pair of cases that challenged a state’s decision to not include medical cannabis in its workers’ compensation program.

Given all of the seismic activity in the high court as of late, you are forgiven if you missed that.

From abortion to guns to prayer in school, the emboldened, conservative Supreme Court has taken on seemingly every hot button issue but cannabis, issuing a series of decisions that are poised to reshape American life and deepen the country’s polarization.

No decision rendered by the court in the last week—or perhaps in the last 50 years—has inflamed passions and divided the nation more than Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and ended the constitutional right to an abortion.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court’s conservative justices effectively handed abortion policy back to the states. The result was swift, with outright abortion bans taking effect immediately in a handful of states: South Dakota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Alabama. A number of other states with their own highly restrictive abortion laws also were triggered by the ruling.

In overturning Roe, which had enshrined the right to an abortion in the United States for nearly 50 years, the court essentially laid the groundwork for a country in which abortion is widely available in liberal blue states, but severely restricted—if not outlawed completely—in conservative red states.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the majority opinion. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.”

The court’s liberal bloc wrote a scathing dissenting opinion.

“With sorrow—for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection—we dissent,” the three justices wrote jointly.

The decision sparked immediate nationwide protests and is poised to animate this year’s midterm elections and the 2024 presidential campaign.

A day before it announced its decision in Dobbs, the Supreme Court handed down another decision that will likely have ripple effects throughout the country.

In a 6-3 ruling, the court struck down New York’s century-old law that imposes strict limits on an individuals’ ability to carry a gun outside their home.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas asserted that the Second Amendment ensures “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”

The law, which had been in place since 1911, required “applicants for a license to carry a gun outside of their homes to have a ‘proper cause’ to do so,” according to NBC News.

Per The New York Times, the decision “is expected to spur a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen existing state and federal restrictions and will force five states — California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey, home to a quarter of all Americans — to rewrite their laws.”

On Monday, the Supreme Court continued its string of contentious decisions by ruling in favor of a Seattle area high school football coach who conducted a prayer at the 50-yard-line following his team’s games.

In yet another 6-3 ruling, the court’s majority said that the coach’s ritual is protected under the First Amendment.

“Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse republic — whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the majority.

The coach, Joseph Kennedy, had been suspended by the school district when he refused to stop the post-game prayer.

Gorsuch contended that Kennedy’s prayers were done quietly and discreetly, a point that Justice Sonia Sotomayor fiercely disputed.

In her dissenting opinion, Sotomayor noted that “Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student-athletes in prayer.” Her opinion also included a photo of Kennedy kneeling in prayer with a large group of players. The prayer resulted in undue pressure on members of the team, Sotomayor argued.

“Students look up to their teachers and coaches as role models and seek their approval,” Sotomayor wrote. “Students also depend on this approval for tangible benefits. Players recognize that gaining the coach’s approval may pay dividends small and large, from extra playing time to a stronger letter of recommendation to additional support in college athletic recruiting.”

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