Floridians are about to vote on Amendment 3, a ballot measure that would legalize recreational marijuana for all adults. The state is already the country’s largest medical-only market, with 831,000 doctor-approved patients spending more than $2 billion annually. Legalizing it fully would open sales to the Sunshine State’s 140 million annual visitors.

This potential bonanza has the cannabis industry salivating. Tallahassee-based Trulieve, one of the country’s largest pot companies, with almost 160 dispensaries in Florida alone, has put more than $140 million into the effort, more than 90 percent of total contributions. For comparison, the two sides in Florida’s “likely Republican”–rated Senate race have raised a combined $73 million.

Like the state’s upcoming vote on whether to protect the right to abortion until fetal viability, Amendment 3 needs 60 percent support to pass. Legalization has never been more popular: A year ago, Gallup found 70 percent of Americans support it—87 percent of Democrats and 55 percent of Republicans—with support more than doubling since 2001.

It’s among the least-partisan issues in the country, a reflection of the policy’s general popularity and the opposition’s low voltage. Almost no one protests pot shops. But the politics, somewhat removed from our familiar red–blue divides, are anything but docile. And in Florida they’re a proxy fight for how the cannabis industry will take shape nationwide.

The ballot measure, on the eve of the vote, appears closer than legalization’s broad popularity suggests. A new poll from Florida Atlantic University puts support at exactly 60 percent. Reluctance among some voters in the state may owe to controversy over whether the amendment is too friendly to Trulieve and other big companies in how it would shape the state’s market. Leading the opposition to the “big weed cartel” that Amendment 3 would create is Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Despite making his name as one of America’s staunchest conservatives, DeSantis picking this fight is unusual for several reasons. First, politicians don’t normally volunteer to oppose things that are as broadly popular as legal weed, especially when it requires going against a good portion of their voters, allies, and donors.

Now, due largely to DeSantis’ opposition, Amendment 3 has split Florida Republicans. Longtime legalization supporter Rep. Matt Gaetz has sided with DeSantis—he says it shouldn’t be resolved in the state constitution—but Donald Trump endorsed the measure, soon after a reported meeting with Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers.

One can see the logic in DeSantis, who has built his career on anti-wokeness, taking on weed, which still carries a vague whiff of the anti-capitalist left. But in fact, Trulieve—which won Florida’s first medical marijuana license in 2015—had ties to Tallahassee Republicans when DeSantis was a congressional backbencher. The governor’s position while in office, since 2018, has been to project his distaste for the product and its “putrid” smell while quietly working with the industry, which in Florida meant working with Trulieve.

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