“We need the State Legislature to responsibly create laws that prohibit the use of it in public spaces, so we do not smell marijuana everywhere we go, like we do in many of the Democrat run Cities,” said former President Donald Trump in a Saturday Truth Social post.
He was talking about the legalization of marijuana in his home state of Florida. While neither medical nor recreational marijuana use is legal under federal law, it was legal in 24 states as of this February. More than half the nation’s population lives in a state where recreational marijuana is legal, according to the Pew Research Center.
According to the Drug Enforcement Agency, marijuana is a “mind-altering psychoactive drug,” that is commonly in the form of dried and shredded flowers, stems and seeds of the cannabis sativa plant. Its psychoactive component is THC (delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol). Marijuana is listed as a Schedule I drug, described as substances with “no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” by the DEA.
“No deaths from overdose of marijuana have been reported,” said the agency. “Although, there have been an increasing number of emergency room visits involving marijuana edibles.”
Trump said that legalization of marijuana in Florida will happen “whether people like it or not... through the approval of the Voters,” and that he wants it done correctly.
“Someone should not be a criminal in Florida, when this is legal in so many other States. We do not need to ruin lives & waste Taxpayer Dollars arresting adults with personal amounts of it on them, and no one should grieve a loved one because they died from fentanyl laced marijuana,” said the GOP presidential candidate. “We will make America SAFE again!”
Trump has expressed skepticism about legal marijuana in the past.
“In some ways I think it’s good and in other ways it’s bad,” he told Bill O’Reilly in 2016, according to the Marijuana Policy Project. “I do want to see what the medical effects are. I have to see what the medical effects are and, by the way – medical marijuana, medical? I’m in favor of it a hundred percent. But what you are talking about, perhaps not. It’s causing a lot of problems out there.”
Last November, Gallup polling found that support for the legalization of marijuana reached a record high of 70%. Democrats were the most likely to support it at 87%, while 70% of independents supported it and 55% of Republicans.