“The GOP acted with actual malice, either knowingly or recklessly disregarding that the statements it published about Trulieve were false … and — when specifically put on notice of the truth and asked to retract — refusing to retract, because the GOP intends to dupe Florida voters into voting against a ballot initiative that would legalize the recreational use of cannabis in Florida,” the lawsuit said.
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The Miami Hereald
Florida’s largest medical-marijuana company filed a defamation lawsuit Wednesday accusing the state Republican Party of launching an “intentionally deceptive campaign” to mislead voters about a proposed constitutional amendment that would allow recreational use of marijuana.
With voting by mail already underway in the Nov. 5 election, the lawsuit filed by Trulieve, Inc. — which has spent nearly $93 million on the recreational-marijuana initiative — also accused the owners of two Fort Myers-based television stations of running a “demonstrably false” ad “trying to fool Florida voters” into voting against what will appear on the ballot as Amendment 3. “The GOP knew that the claims in the deceptive mailer and ad were false, intentionally deceptive, and duplicitous but published them anyway in order to trick Florida voters into voting against a ballot initiative that would legalize the recreational use of cannabis in Florida,” the lawsuit said.
The TV ad features a gardener who sees a news broadcast saying that the amendment could “legalize recreational marijuana.” The gardener rushes to start planting but is confronted by a “Big Weed” character that says, “Actually, we wrote the amendment, so we’re the only ones that can grow it.” The inability of people to grow their own weed has become a major issue in efforts to defeat the proposal.
Opponents of the marijuana measure, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, contend that the proposal will help the state’s “monopoly” of licensed medical-marijuana companies because it will allow them to begin selling recreational pot. The measure also would allow the Legislature to expand the number of operators. “Amendment 3 cannot prohibit something that is already prohibited, and the plain text of Amendment 3 says nothing about the home cultivation of cannabis and does not change the current state of the law with respect to that issue,” the lawsuit said. Trulieve’s lawyers argued that the “Big Weed” character “is reasonably understood” by Florida voters to be Trulieve, because the company is “the largest cannabis manufacturer in the state, and because prominent Florida Republicans have publicly claimed that Trulieve authored Amendment 3.” The “gist of the ad” is that Trulieve drafted the proposal to minimize competition, the lawsuit alleged. According to the lawsuit, the Republican Party of Florida “paid the media defendants” to broadcast the “deceptive
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