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Florida Supreme Court To Hear Pam Bondi's Argument Against Pot Ballot

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The campaign to bring medical marijuana to Florida will face what may be a massive roadblock on Thursday. Florida’s Supreme Court will hear arguments on the case brought by Attorney General Pam Bondi. She says the proposed language for the ballot gives too many people access to the drug.

While the case is about what the voters would see on the ballot University of Miami law professor Donald Jones says the court will have to consider the entire argument for medical marijuana.

“The court is going to have to engage in a balancing test,” he says. “My sense is that this is a case where substance will take precedence.”

Jones says that substantive argument is not about word choice.

"If the medical marijuana would reduce harm, if there's a consensus among medical professionals that this is good, that's the strongest argument,” he says.

People United for Medical Marijuana, the group that started this push to legalize medical marijuana, have been collecting the signatures for the petition required to put the initiative on the ballot.

If the court rules against them, “they’ll have to start over … go back to zero,” Jones says.

But he does not expect that to happen: “If I were handicapping this like a horse race I would give it two-to-one that the medical-marijuana advocates prevail on this one.”

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