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See John Morgan’s quote below
Compared to Gaetz, who has widely known pro-legalization stance on marijuana—and had even vowed to “go easy” on the cannabis industry if he got the job—Bondi’s record on the issue is far less pro-reform.
As Florida’s AG, for example, Bondi opposed efforts to legalize medical marijuana.
While serving in the top state law enforcement role, from January 2011 to January 2019, she occasionally waded into other cannabis-related issues. In at least some of those instances, she was defending laws passed by the legislature, which is generally standard practice for attorneys general.
In 2018, for example, Bondi as attorney general filed an appeals brief in state court defending the legislature’s ban on smoking medical marijuana, with her office citing “harms to patients and those exposed to secondhand smoke” as “ample reasons to exclude smoking from the statutory definition of ‘medical use.’”
The judge in that case, however, ultimately found that the state’s medical marijuana amendment “recognizes there is no right to smoke in public places, thereby implicitly recognizing the appropriateness of using smokable medical marijuana in private places consistent with the amendment.” Smoking was later added as an approved form of delivery for medical cannabis patients under a push from Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) administration.
Kim Rivers, CEO of the medical marijuana company Trulieve, which bankrolled a marijuana legalization initiative that failed to pass this month, said of Bondi on social media Thursday: “I think she is a great pick!”
Rivers noted that Bondi’s opposition to smokable marijuana, for example, was “following [then-Gov. Rick Scott’s (R)] direction on that at the time.”
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One of Florida’s most outspoken advocates for cannabis reform, trial lawyer John Morgan, previously criticized Bondi in her role opposing medical marijuana as attorney general.
“She knows about as much about constitutional law as my Jack Russell terrier does,” he said at the time.
This isn’t the first time Bondi’s name has come up as a possible Trump pick for AG. During his first term, in 2018, following the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Bondi’s name was floated as a possible replacement.
At the time, Nancy Smith of Sunshine State News characterized Bondi’s opposition to cannabis as pragmatic.
“As committed as she’s been to taking down Florida’s pill mills and cracking down on the illegal use of prescription drugs generally, Bondi is not so ideologically committed to keeping marijuana illegal that she won’t stand down in the face of overwhelming public opposition to her position,” Smith wrote, at that point weighing the possibility that Bondi might be named Trump’s drug czar. “She and others who opposed the 2014 amendment filed more than 200 pages in legal briefs then, while in 2016—nothing.
Read more detail at
Trump’s New Attorney General Pick Opposed Legalizing Medical Marijuana In Florida
