Marijuana

Nearly two years after Florida voters approved a referendum legalizing medical marijuana, dispensaries are still few and far between in the Sunshine State. Across Miami-Dade County, only five storefronts sell legal cannabis.

Since signing on to the program, North Miami cops made 214 arrests of people with less than 20 grams of marijuana. The city is just the latest in Miami-Dade County to ignore a legislative push to arrest fewer people for weed possession, as well as a handful of other minor offenses covered by a 2015 county ordinance. Since the ordinance passed in June 2015, North Miami PD has made 549 arrests.

Miami-Dade kinda decriminalized marijuana in 2015. That year, the county commission gave police officers the option of issuing civil tickets, like traffic fines, instead of arresting people caught with 20 grams of pot or less. The measure was hailed as a massive win for justice-reform advocates, who rightfully argue that pot possession is harmless and not worth jail time.

More than 70 percent of Floridians voted to legalize medical marijuana in 2016, yet many local governments still have bizarrely hostile relationships with pot. Take the City of Miami. Despite the fact that Miami-area cops have the option to issue tickets for weed, a New Times investigation found that they’re instead…

Two more blocks and Polini Sanon would have made it home. The 31-year-old father of five had just left his job as a Wells Fargo banker on a Friday night in 2017 when his life took an unexpected turn. It was just a few minutes past 6 p.m. but already…

Medical pot is on the rise in Florida. Since voters legalized medical marijuana and low-THC cannabis in the November 2016 general election, Florida has added 144,557 patients to the Office of Medical Marijuana Use’s user registry, according to the Department of Health’s latest update. For a state with a population of 21 million, about one in 145 Floridians can legally use medical weed.

Legal recreational weed in Florida just got closer to becoming a reality. John Morgan, the Orlando attorney whose fortune and advocacy helped bring medical marijuana to the Sunshine State, says he’s throwing his weight behind an effort to get recreational pot on the ballot in 2020.

When 72 percent of Florida voters chose to legalize medical marijuana via a 2016 ballot initiative, most of them expected to be able to light up bongs, bowls, and blunts stuffed with newly legal cannabis. Because nothing is ever easy in Florida, that wasn’t the case: The state Legislature outlawed smoking medical pot and instead legalized only edibles, vaporized pot, and cannabis oil.

Florida voters overwhelmingly approved medical marijuana in late 2016. But for many patients across the state, actually getting medical pot is still almost impossible. In some cases, the state has taken months to approve applications, while suppliers that can’t keep up with the demand are constantly out of stock.

Last month, Tampa-based strip club pioneer Joe Redner successfully sued the state for the right to grow his own medical marijuana. Now Redner is going after the state to undo its hilariously restrictive licensing rules, which have allowed only a handful of politically connected companies into the game.

It looks like 4/20 will be a big day for marijuana in Miami Beach. The island’s first cannabis dispensary will open on South Beach tomorrow, just over a year after city commissioners agreed on four zones where marijuana establishments would be allowed to set up shop.

From early Reefer Madness panic to the ’70s hippie weed cult that took over Star Island to the glory days of ’80s smuggling in Everglades City, Florida has a long, deep, and complex relationship with marijuana — as New Times explores in this week’s cover story. Though Florida has finally legalized medical pot, full-blown, Colorado-style recreational dope still feels a long way away in the Sunshine State.

Florida’s fast-developing medical marijuana market is little explored or understood. Beginning today, Miami New Times and New Times Broward-Palm Beach are partnering with a national cannabis information company, Herban Planet, to bring you more about product-specific dispensaries, delivery services, local farms, attorneys, and more.

Today, legal marijuana flourishes in fields and greenhouses from Homestead to Tallahassee. Every day, new cannabis clinics hang green neon crosses in their windows, while millions of dollars pour in from global investors looking to get into the Mary Jane business. Weed has finally gone legit in Florida. So it’s…

The career path of Dr. Hervé Damas has been unorthodox. He has been a linebacker for the Buffalo Bills, a professor and wellness director at the College of New Jersey, and an interventional radiologist at Mount Sinai. Most recently, though, he has taken on the mantle of marijuana doctor.

As medical marijuana becomes a big business in Florida, the companies who got in the door first are doing everything in their power to minimize competition and maximize their bottom line. And that means pushing for a closed system that prevents most people from breaking into the cannabis industry — and hurts patients by stifling competition and innovation.

Most attorneys don’t deserve the bad rap their profession has gotten. But when a lawyer hires an unlicensed doctor to help sell fake marijuana certificates for $800 apiece that supposedly give people legal cover to grow weed, he has earned a bit of that ugly reputation. And once SWAT teams start kicking those clients’ doors down and hauling them off to jail, it’s probably time that lawyer lost his license.

What do some people call cocaine? Try Bolivian marching powder. What is alien sex fiend? PCP combined with heroin, at least according to the Drug Enforcement Administration’s report on drug slang.

Florida and marijuana are already a well-matched couple. Jimmy Buffett, the state’s de facto songwriter-in-chief, supported himself as a weed smuggler and wrote odes to mary jane. The tropical climate is perfect for growing herb. And finally given the chance on a statewide ballot, more than seven in ten voters hopped on the medical-marijuana train in 2016.

Florida medical marijuana seems hopelessly mired in bureaucratic gridlock. Monday morning in Tallahassee, legislators on an oversight committee vented their frustration with the Department of Health’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use and the man appointed to run it, Christian Bax.

The people have spoken: They want to smoke weed. In a recent nationwide Gallup Poll, 64 percent of respondents said the use of marijuana should be legalized. That’s the highest response rate in favor of legalization Gallup has recorded since 1969. And do you know how many people smoked pot in…