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United For Care Says They Have 900,000 Signatures

Leon County Judge John Cooper on June 30, 2022, in a screen grab from The Florida Channel.
WMFE
/
The Florida Channel
United for Care has collected 900,000 signatures for a Florida 2016 medical marijuana ballot.

United for Care has collected 900,000 signatures to put medical marijuana in front of voters in 2016, the group said Tuesday.

“It appears we have more signatures than is required,” said Matt Morgan with the Morgan law firm, which has been backing the campaign.

The Florida Department of State Division of Elections says 400,032 of those signatures have been validated.

United for Care has a goal of collecting a million signatures, and the group says it will likely hit that mark by the end of the year. Technically, 683,000 is the mark, but organizers collect more than that because the signatures have to be from verified registered voters.

Morgan said it’s been easier getting signatures this time.

“Before we had to identify who our supporters were,” Morgan said. “Now we have an idea who our supporters are because they helped us in the last election cycle.”

Medical marijuana just barely missed getting the 60 percent of the votes needed to pass in 2014 in Florida. Opponents say the amendment is too broad, and will make marijuana more accessible to kids. Florida has a non-euphoric medical marijuana law on the books, but implementation has been jammed up from lawsuits – including 13 more filed this week.

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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.