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Florida Voters:

Florida Amendment 3, Marijuana Legalization Initiative (2024)

https://ballotpedia.org/Florida_Amendment_3,_Marijuana_Legalization_Initiative_(2024)

Florida Amendment 3, the Marijuana Legalization Initiative, is on the ballot in Florida as an initiated constitutional amendment on November 5, 2024.

A “yes” vote supports legalizing marijuana for adults 21 years old and older and allowing individuals to possess up to three ounces of marijuana.

A “no” vote opposes legalizing marijuana for adult use in Florida.

Supermajority requirement: A 60% supermajority vote is required for the approval of the amendment.

Overview

What would the initiative do?

The initiative would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 years old and older. Individuals would be allowed to possess up to three ounces of marijuana (about 85 grams), with up to five grams in the form of concentrate. Existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers would be authorized under the initiative to sell marijuana to adults for personal use. The Florida State Legislature could provide by state law for the licensure of entities other than existing Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers to cultivate and sell marijuana products.[1]

Medical marijuana was adopted by Florida voters in 2016 by a vote of 71% to 29%.

Who is supporting and opposing this initiative?

Smart and Safe Florida is sponsoring the initiative. The campaign reported $39.55 million in contributions, all from Trulieve, a marijuana dispensary company that owns medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida.[2] Smart & Safe Florida said, “The industry is sustainable and growing. In 2020, when the state lost more than 400,000 jobs, Florida’s cannabis industry added 15,000 employees. ... Tax revenues from the legal cannabis industry for federal and state governments are projected to reach $4.06 billion in 2025, according to New Frontier data. ... There is no evidence that legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational use at the state level, as 37 states already have done, has boosted underage consumption from the regulated marketplace. The continued black market sale of marijuana perpetuates a culture of criminality. ... If adult-use cannabis is legalized, Florida users will have accountability, transparency, and regulations in place to ensure products are not laced with or contain potentially deadly chemicals.”[3]

Opponents of the initiative include Drug Free America, the Florida Chamber of Commerce, and Florida Attorney General Ashley B. Moody (R). The attorney general is required to petition the Florida Supreme Court for an advisory opinion on the constitutionality of proposed initiatives. Moody filed briefs with the state supreme court in which she argued that the measure should be blocked from appearing on the ballot because the ballot summary is misleading because it fails to accurately inform voters that marijuana would be illegal under federal law. She also alleged that the ballot summary would allow[] Medical Marijuana Treatment Centers, and other state licensed entities, to acquire, cultivate, process, manufacture, sell, and distribute marijuana, though “the amendment itself ‘allows’ no such thing—it merely declines to disturb the legislature’s preexisting authority to license additional such entities.”[4]

The No Cash Charge

https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024/04/02/the-no-cash-charge/

Excerpt:

Why do you suppose you can’t pay cash to charge up an EV?

Many people don’t even know you can’t pay cash to charge up an EV. That you must put an app on your phone that’s used to charge your account. This means you must have your tracking device – whoops, your “smart” phone – with you wherever you go. If you go via EV. It means the system knows when, where and how much you’ve been charging.

There’s no legitimate reason for this.

The self-checkout machines at supermarkets take cash as well as charge – at least for now – and there’s no technical reason why an EV charger could not also accept cash. Yet none do.

Why is that?

Well, there are the reasons already mentioned. It is clear that part of the push to “electrify” personal transportation is a push to data mine personal information. There’s very little money in cash, you see. But data can be extremely profitable. It’s a big business – and you’re the product.

There are also more sinister reasons, of course. Because nothing the government does is ever benevolent.

It is hard to prevent someone who has cash from paying for things he needs; the government has no way of knowing whether you even have cash and never mind what you may have bought with it. The government does not like this anonymity – and neither do the corporations that have become even worse than government because the Bill of Rights restrains corporations even less than it restrains the government. Both want to know every last detail of your financial life as well as your life, generally. They want to be able to quickly discover discrepancies – your spending vs. your income, for instance. So as to make sure – as far as the government is concerned – that you always pay every cent in taxes the government says you “owe.”

That latter business being just stupendous – in terms of its gall. No honest thief would tell you that you “owe” him money. Such insolent derangement is characteristic of government only.

Anyhow, it bothers the government that you can pay cash for gas because the transaction is outside the knowledge and so control of the government. The heavy-handed attempt to “lock down” the population during the authoritarian theatrical event styled “the pandemic” failed to lock down the population – in part because anyone who had a car (and gas) could drive pretty much wherever they needed to go. And that was easy enough to do because the government was not able to “lock down” cash transactions.

Envision what it would be like if the government – and the corporations that are becoming indistinguishable from government – could finely control how much charge you are allowed to buy. Could prevent you from buying any charge at all – for any reason at all – by locking you out of your account.

.....Well, you can only drive if you own an EV and only if you have the app that connects your digital wallet to the charge machine. The government deciding whether you’ll be allowed to drive by having the power to control whether (and how much) you can charge. When transportation is “electrified” – and cashless – it will be so much easier for the government to control movement by centralizing it without most people realizing it.

People see individually owned EVs and think nothing has fundamentally changed. You still have your car; it just happens to be a battery powered device. But all of this is illusory in that every single EV you see is literally tethered to a central control hub that controls the electricity (home solar charging in anything less than days requires a massive array at massive cost and so it’s off-the-table for most people).
And financially, via the cashless app that your have to use in order to buy the charge.

If it sounds sinister, that’s because it is. If it weren’t, these EV chargers would accept cash, so as to make it easier for people to pay for a charge and to encourage people who prefer to use cash to buy and drive an EV.

But that’s not the case. It is in fact the opposite case. And that’s why it’s sinister – unless you think it’s harmless and even benevolent to give government and corporations the power to micromanage our comings and goings.