Miami-Dade may have a reputation as a party destination, but across the country a majority of voters Tuesday balked at allowing recreational marijuana as part of the attraction.
While nearly 56% of Florida voters supported Amendment 3, only 49% of Miami-Dade voters supported the proposal to legalize the sale of marijuana without a prescription, making the state’s most populous region one of the most conservative regions in the field of cannabis.
Miami-Dade was one of only three counties where the number of votes cast on Amendment 3 exceeded 100,000 and support fell below 50%. Only Collier and Sumter counties joined Miami-Dade on that list.
The amendment, which failed, needed 60% support to pass.
See how your city voted on Amendment 3
Officials and pollsters have differing opinions on why Miami-Dade County rejected Amendment 3: Republicans and Hispanic voters opposed it; a state-sponsored campaign against it was effective; voters didn’t want to smell weed; or a medical marijuana market made it obsolete.
A Miami Herald analysis of results from each of Miami-Dade’s 757 precincts shows that Hispanic-majority neighborhoods voted overwhelmingly against legalizing recreational marijuana. Most voters in each of the county’s majority-black neighborhoods, meanwhile, supported Amendment 3, as was the case in 38 of the county’s 45 mostly white neighborhoods.
“What I think you saw is the same way that President Trump won the independents, who are predominantly Hispanics here in Miami-Dade; those same people were not necessarily in favor of” marijuana, said County Commissioner Kevin Marino Cabrera. “It just thinks it doesn’t align with our values and our beliefs.”
Even Donald Trump’s support for Amendment 3 couldn’t convince voters in cities like Hialeah, where 75% of voters voted for the former president, and only 35% voted in favor of recreational marijuana. Similarly, in Hialeah Gardens, only 34% of voters supported Amendment 3. In nearby Miami Lakes, the number was only slightly higher, at 40%.
Mayor Esteban ‘Steve’ Bovo Jr. of Hialeah thinks the city’s opposition to recreational marijuana is “simple”: They and most other Floridians were concerned about how it would affect their lives.
“Whether you’re Hispanic, whether you’re black, whether you’re white, there’s one thing we all have in common: you want quality of life. You don’t want your children to be in danger,” he said. “I don’t know how legalizing marijuana will somehow make a better situation for families.”
Had it passed, Amendment 3 would have legalized recreational marijuana use for those 21 years or older. The campaign for Amendment 3, led by Smart & Safe Florida, was supported by more than $140 million in donations from Trulieve, the largest medical marijuana company in the state.
On the other hand, DeSantis’ administration used millions of taxpayer dollars to wage advertising campaigns against the amendment, and joined with the hemp industry to defeat the measure. In advertisements, websites, and press conferences, the administration argued that this would change the quality of life, benefit only corporations, and make Florida “more liberal.”
Part of the debate between the two sides focused on the text of the amendment: how much control it gave companies, how it would be regulated and what its impact would be.
In West Miami, where only 45% of voters supported Amendment 3, Mayor Eric Diaz-Padron said he thinks the text’s flaws provide a compelling reason to vote against it. He believes the opposition would have been greater if the DeSantis administration had spent more and “more people had known what was in the actual text.”
“I think some people took this from the governor and the lieutenant governor, what the liability protections were, how far the amendment went that I think people were concerned about,” he said, referring to a line in the amendment which states: use of marijuana will not be subject to “criminal or civil liability or penalties.”
Sentiment toward marijuana in Miami-Dade County has softened in recent years, with county commissioners allowing police to issue citations instead of making arrests for minor possession. Nearly five years ago, State’s Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said her prosecutors would stop prosecuting low-level possession cases after the state legalized the use of hemp, which looks and smells like marijuana.
Yet Amendment 3 performed worse at the ballot box than the movement to expand access to abortion. Although it also failed, that proposal, Amendment 4, was more popular, gaining 58% of the vote in the county. In neighboring Broward County, where Vice President Kamala Harris was favored, and Palm Beach County, where the two presidential candidates were nearly tied, support for recreational marijuana was about 60%, but there was a similar gap between support for two amendments.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party and a former marijuana lobbyist, said the messages against Amendment 3 were amplified by a general lack of motivation.
“People just aren’t motivated to stand up for that issue,” she said.
Miami-based consultant Ben Pollara, who led Florida’s 2016 medical marijuana campaign, said he encountered an “instinctive cultural conservatism” in Miami in 2016 — but that he thinks state campaigns against Amendment 3 had a big impact.
He said the first medical marijuana campaign he ran in 2014 — a losing effort — was met with a similar argument from officials over the text: that “medical marijuana is great,” but not this bill. A “version of those messages,” he said, that “this is for the corporations,” influenced this amendment.
“Marijuana is an issue that the country and the state have evolved substantially over the past decade,” he said. “But the support that has grown for legalization is, I think, still relatively weak and subject to nuances.”
Miami Herald staff writer Douglas Hanks and McClatchy investigative journalist Shirsho Dasgupta contributed to this report.
