Florida’s fight over legal weed is back in the headlines for a reason that has nothing to do with THC potency and everything to do with public money.
State records show Florida’s Department of Children and Families issued a purchase order to Strategic Digital Services, a Tallahassee marketing firm, totaling $5,599,120, including a $4,499,120 line item for an advertising campaign meant to “educat[e] Floridian families and youth about the dangers of marijuana, opioid, and drug use.”
That would be ordinary, if uncontroversial, government public-health messaging in a state still grappling with addiction.
The problem is timing, sourcing and oversight. Florida Phoenix reported in October 2024 that DCF had allocated “nearly $4 million” from Florida’s opioid-settlement trust funds for that campaign as voters weighed Amendment 3, the 2024 adult-use marijuana legalization measure.
Two years later, MJBizDaily summarized reporting attributed to the Orlando Sentinel saying DeSantis administration officials never told the statewide advisory board created to help oversee opioid settlement spending that settlement cash would be steered into an anti-legalization push.
In other words, Florida’s opioid settlement money may have been routed into messaging that functioned like election-adjacent advocacy, without the kind of transparency that keeps public trust intact.
What the documents show, in black and white
Start with what can be documented without guessing.
The Florida Department of Financial Services’ F.A.C.T.S. database lists purchase order C45380 for DCF, naming Strategic Digital Services as the vendor and showing a total purchase order amount of $5,599,120. The record breaks out two line items.
The first is the big one: $4,499,120 for a “government affairs and community relations consultation service,” with a description explicitly calling for an “impactful advertising campaign” warning about marijuana, opioids and drug use.
The same F.A.C.T.S. record shows “Total Payment To Date” of $1,565,040, with payment vouchers recorded on Oct. 7, 2024 ($1,217,040), Oct. 21, 2024 ($250,000) and Dec. 9, 2024 ($98,000). The purchase order also lists a “Purchase Order Beginning Date” of Aug. 30, 2024 and an ending date of June 30, 2025.
One detail that invites scrutiny, even if it has an administrative explanation: the record displays an “Order Date” of June 2, 2025, even though the payments shown were recorded months earlier in 2024. Databases sometimes reflect amendments, rollups or internal accounting mechanics that are not obvious to the public.
That kind of mismatch is exactly why watchdogs ask for underlying ledgers, approvals and procurement documentation instead of treating a single screenshot as the whole story.
Florida Phoenix’s 2024 reporting added a key claim: that the money came from the opioid settlement trust fund. The F.A.C.T.S. purchase order record, by itself, does not label the funding source as opioid settlement dollars in plain English. It shows account codes and budget lines, which is useful, but not the same as a ledger trail that ties each payment to the opioid settlement trust.
What opioid settlement money is supposed to do
States did not sue opioid manufacturers and distributors to bankroll unrelated political messaging. Florida’s own public materials frame the settlement dollars as abatement money: funds meant to reduce overdoses and expand evidence-based treatment and prevention.
DCF’s opioid settlement page says Florida will receive $205.7 million in “year one” settlement funds through the opioid settlement, with authority flowing through the FY 2023-24 state budget. It describes a goal of reducing overdoses via evidence-based programming and immediate access to evidence-based treatment models.
A one-page overview posted by the governor’s office in 2023 similarly describes a plan to use $205.7 million from the opioid settlement for programs that prevent and treat substance abuse, including a chunk labeled “Preventing Addiction Through Education.” Prevention messaging is part of abatement. Public education is not inherently off-limits.
The ethical question is narrower and sharper: was the state’s marijuana-focused messaging a good-faith public-health campaign tied to overdose prevention, or did it function as a taxpayer-funded assist in a ballot fight?
Amendment 3, the election that never ends
Florida’s Amendment 3 became a national industry obsession because Florida is a prize market: huge population, a massive medical program and a regulatory system that already has major operators in place. On Election Day 2024, the measure won a majority but still failed because Florida requires 60% approval for constitutional amendments.
Reuters reported the initiative drew more than 55% support but fell short of 60%, and noted projections that adult-use sales could have hit roughly $4.9 billion to $6.1 billion in the first year. It also detailed the scale of campaign spending, including reporting that Trulieve poured enormous money into the effort.
AP, covering the broader set of Florida ballot fights that night, reported that DeSantis actively campaigned against Amendment 3 as it fell short of the 60% bar.
Those facts matter because election context is what transforms a “drug dangers” PSA into something voters may reasonably experience as persuasion. When the governor is loudly opposing legalization, state-funded ads warning about marijuana—timed as ballots are being cast—are going to be interpreted through that lens, even if the fine print insists they are “educational.”
The oversight fight: “Who approved this, and who knew?”
Florida Phoenix’s October 2024 story captures the tension inside the opioid oversight structure. During a Statewide Council on Opioid Abatement meeting, Seminole County Commissioner Lee Constantine raised concern about reports that settlement dollars were being used to educate people “on Amendment 3 and being against Amendment 3.”
He also stressed uncertainty, saying he was not alleging wrongdoing as a proven fact. The council’s chair, Seminole County Sheriff Dennis Lemma, said he had not been consulted about those reported conversations and said the council should not be politically motivated.
This is where transparency stops being a vibe and becomes a requirement. If a board exists to oversee abatement dollars, bypassing it—or even appearing to—invites the suspicion that someone wanted fewer eyes on the decision.
PSA or electioneering? The line is real, even if it is messy
The F.A.C.T.S. purchase order description does not mention Amendment 3. It talks about dangers of marijuana, opioid and drug use, aimed at families and youth. That language could fit a prevention campaign, especially in a world where youth substance use prevention is a legitimate goal.
The question is what the public record does not yet show.
It does not show the creative files, scripts, video cuts or disclaimers that tell you whether the message was narrowly health-focused or broadly fear-based. It does not show media-buy placements, targeting parameters, flight dates and impressions that would reveal whether the campaign was timed to early voting, concentrated in high-turnout media markets, or served to demographic slices that look more like persuadable voters than at-risk teens. It also does not show internal legal reviews addressing the risk that “education” becomes de facto advocacy.
A fair reading is that the documents prove a sizable state ad buy about marijuana and opioids happened, and that payments were made during the heart of the 2024 election window. A fair reading also admits what remains unverified: whether those specific dollars were directly sourced from opioid settlement trust funds for every payment, and whether the content crossed any legal line.
The health-claims trap: cannabis risk is real, and so is bad messaging
Public-health messaging about cannabis has to walk a tightrope: the risks are real, the science is complicated and the political incentives often reward exaggeration.
The National Academies’ landmark review on cannabis concluded that “conclusive evidence” about many short- and long-term health effects remains elusive, while also identifying areas where the evidence is stronger, including concerns for vulnerable populations like adolescents.
NIDA’s cannabis overview, updated in September 2024, similarly notes that THC products can affect mood, thinking and perceptions, and can cause harmful health effects, with particular concern around youth.
None of that requires a state to pretend cannabis is harmless. It does require honesty about what is known, what is uncertain and what is being inferred. It also requires discipline about scope. A campaign that bundles “marijuana, opioid, and drug dangers” into one warning label may feel efficient to a marketer, but public health is not a logo redesign.
Opioid overdoses are often driven by specific supply dynamics and risk environments, especially with illicit fentanyl. Collapsing everything into a generalized “drugs are bad” message can become more about politics than prevention.
That nuance matters for cannabis consumers too, including here in Arizona, where adult-use legalization has been reality since 2021. A community can hold two truths at once: legalization reduces arrests for simple possession, and cannabis use carries risks that deserve straightforward education. Credibility is the currency. Once a state burns it, every future warning sounds like spin.
Why this story still matters in 2026
Florida is not done fighting about legal weed. It is still fighting about the process of letting voters fight about it.
Smart & Safe Florida’s 2026 initiative, titled “Adult Personal Use of Marijuana,” remains listed as active in the Florida Division of Elections database. The state’s page shows 783,592 valid signatures against 880,062 needed for ballot placement, with an asterisked disclaimer that totals reported by local supervisors may not reflect the secretary of state’s final determination amid ongoing litigation and record corrections.
AP reported in early February 2026 that Florida officials said the recreational marijuana initiative, along with other citizen initiatives, failed to qualify for the 2026 ballot by the deadline, while the campaign disputed the state’s count and said more petitions were still being processed.
That procedural fight—who counts, when they count, and what gets thrown out—keeps the 2024 spending questions alive, because both sides are building narratives about fairness and good faith.
This is also happening in a state where settlement-adjacent money and politics keep colliding. Politico reported in April 2025 on scrutiny surrounding a $10 million payment routed through the Hope Florida Foundation and tied, through subsequent transfers by recipient organizations, to anti-Amendment 3 efforts, even as involved groups disputed political use.
That is a separate pool of money from the opioid settlement. The pattern it reinforces is familiar: Floridians keep being asked to trust that public dollars and settlement funds are being used as promised, while documentation arrives late and explanations arrive slower.
The simplest ethical test
Here is the cleanest way to frame it without overreaching: opioid settlement money exists because people died, and because governments promised to spend the proceeds reducing future deaths. Florida’s public materials emphasize overdose reduction through evidence-based treatment and prevention.
If Florida used opioid settlement funds to buy messaging designed to influence a marijuana vote, the state should be able to show its work. That means paperwork, approvals, minutes, legal reviews, creative files and a clear explanation of how the campaign fit abatement goals rather than ballot strategy.
If the campaign was legitimate prevention work, transparency protects it. If it was not, transparency exposes it. Either way, sunlight is cheaper than $4.5 million.
Trap Culture’s crowd knows how this goes: cannabis policy debates always pretend they are about health, until you follow the money and find out they are also about power. Arizona learned long ago that legalization does not end the arguments, it just changes their packaging. Florida is learning something rougher: when public-health cash starts acting like political cash, everyone’s trust gets high and then crashes.
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