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Medical Marijuana Gets Enough Signatures For Supreme Court Review

WMFE
A medical marijuana constitutional amendment is one step closer to the ballot in 2016.

Medical marijuana is one step closer to the ballot in 2016. Supporters have enough signatures to trigger a supreme court review.

United For Care announced they now have more than 73,000 signatures, enough to trigger a review of the medical marijuana amendment’s language. The group still needs another 600,000 signatures to get on the ballot in 2016.

“We have collected in reality close to 400,000 petitions and we’re in the process of submitting those to supervisors of elections and having them verified by the state,” said Ben Pollara, spokesman for United for Care. “We’re in better shape than it looks and in much, much better shape than two years ago.”

Voters narrowly blocked a medical marijuana initiative in 2014. The proposed to Florida’s constitution would allow a doctor to prescribe medical marijuana for debilitating medical conditions.

The Florida legislature approved the use of non-euphoric medical marijuana, but it’s implementation has been held up in courts. Florida’s attorney general has 30 days to study the language of a medical marijuana constitutional amendment.

Opponents in 2014 called Florida’s medical marijuana amendment de-facto legalization.

WMFE is a partner with Health News Florida, which receives support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Health News Florida reporter Abe Aboraya works for WMFE in Orlando. He started writing for newspapers in high school. After graduating from the University of Central Florida in 2007, he spent a year traveling and working as a freelance reporter for the Seattle Times and the Seattle Weekly, and working for local news websites in the San Francisco Bay area. Most recently Abe worked as a reporter for the Orlando Business Journal. He comes from a family of health care workers.