Tag: ron desantis

Colorado Governor’s Office Slams DeSantis’s Marijuana Stance, Pushing Back Against Claim Legalization Led To ‘Bigger’ Illicit Market

If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) needs some advice on how to promote “economic and personal freedom,” the state of Colorado is “happy” to explain the advantages of marijuana legalization, Gov. Jared Polis’s (D) office said after the Republican presidential candidate doubled down on his opposition to cannabis reform.

On Friday, DeSantis peddled a dubious claim that Colorado’s illicit market is “bigger” today than it was before legalizing adult-use cannabis in 2012, justifying his own personal opposition to the reform.

In response, a spokesperson for the Colorado governor’s office offered to correct the record for the 2024 GOP presidential hopeful in a statement to Marijuana Moment.

“The facts are that Colorado voters approved the legalization of marijuana which is curbing the illicit market, getting dealers off the streets, reducing youth use, funding school construction, supporting jobs and Colorado’s economy,” the governor’s spokesperson said. “Colorado is happy to provide the Florida governor advice on how to increase economic and personal freedom like we have in the free state of Colorado.”

In an interview on the radio station KCPS that aired on Friday, first noted by Florida Politics, DeSantis had challenged the idea that regulating marijuana sales puts illicit operators “out of business,” stating that it’s an “interesting” concept that he says hasn’t played out in Colorado, despite evidence to the contrary.

“There have been states like Colorado who’ve done things like legalized marijuana and the argument was, well, you want to have a black market? It will be above-board, taxed and all that stuff,” DeSantis said during the interview. “Yet Colorado has a bigger black market of marijuana since they’ve legalized it.”

It’s well-understood that enacting legalization doesn’t fully eliminate the illicit market, and states have had varying degrees of success to that end. But research indicates that Colorado has been among the most effective at transitioning people to the legal marketplace.

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DeSantis vs. Disney: Florida’s Fight Over Private Governance

On April 22, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill dissolving the Reedy Creek Improvement District, ending perhaps the most successful experiment in private governance in U.S. history. The bill ended an arrangement that turned a swamp on the edges of Orlando into the home of Walt Disney World, one of the busiest tourist destinations on Earth. The governor’s victory is not yet final—while the district was formally dissolved earlier this year, Disney attorneys quickly outfoxed DeSantis, delegating many of the district’s powers back to the company. The company is now suing to reverse the change altogether.

For all the media sound and fury over the duel between the would-be president and the Mouse, experts seem to agree that Disney will retain most of its longstanding autonomy when all the lawsuits are through.

Whatever your views of the “Don’t Say Gay” law that kicked off the DeSantis-Disney feud, or of the increasingly regrettable quality of the live-action Disney feature film reboots of its animated classics, DeSantis’ attempt to dissolve the district is a blatant effort to bully a private company because he disapproved of its constitutionally protected speech. At best, it reveals DeSantis as a culture warrior rather than a small-government conservative. At worst, it exposes DeSantis as a politician willing to toss out the rule of law and free markets to score cheap political points, in the lead-up to a Republican presidential primary in which he’s struggling to meet expectations.

For the most frivolous reasons imaginable, the fate of “the happiest place on Earth” now hangs in the balance.

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Florida’s revival of death penalty fuels rise in US executions in 2023

The US saw a rise in executions in 2023 as a result of Florida’s revival of the death penalty, amid Ron DeSantis’s “tough on crime” campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

DeSantis scheduled six executions this year – the first time the state has judicially killed people since 2019 and the largest number in almost a decade. Florida also handed down five new death sentences this year, more than any other state.

Florida’s sudden return to the death business accounts for the increase in execution numbers nationwide, which rose to 24 in 2023 from 18 in 2022 – a startling reversal of the death penalty’s historical decline across the US.

The flurry of executions greenlit by DeSantis is highlighted in the annual review of capital punishment released on Friday by the authoritative Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). The report points to a sharp dichotomy that while the ultimate punishment is generally on the wane in the US – this year was the ninth in a row when fewer than 30 prisoners were put to death – there is rising concern about the visceral unfairness of the practice.

In Florida’s case, the number of executions carried out this year raises a disturbing ethical prospect: can the cost of DeSantis’s bid for the White House be counted not only in the millions of dollars spent on the campaign trail, but also in human lives?

This is not the first time that the death penalty has been injected into presidential posturing. Bill Clinton, keen to quash claims that he was soft on crime, memorably quit the campaign trail in 1992 to return to Arkansas, where he was then governor, for the execution of a mentally impaired prisoner, Rickey Ray Rector.

DeSantis has similarly made law and order a central pillar of his challenge to Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. In addition to increasing penalties for drug traffickers, DeSantis has passed two new death penalty laws this year designed to make it easier to send people to death row.

The first allows the death sentence to be meted out in cases of the non-fatal sexual assault of a child – a direct contravention of a 2008 US supreme court ruling that prohibits such penalties.

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Official lay dying unnoticed in DeSantis’ office for 24 minutes: law enforcement report

Peter Antonacci left a meeting with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on Sept. 23, 2022, and several moments later, he was dead mere steps from the room. No one noticed. It has been over a year, and the information about the incident is only now being revealed.

Florida Bulldog reported Sunday that the man DeSantis hired to head up his so-called “elections fraud unit” lay dead or dying in the governor’s office before anyone noticed. With security cameras turned to watch, for 24 minutes, Antonacci lay motionless on the ground.

At the time, authorities claimed “he died while at work in the Capitol building, of which the governor’s office is a part,” said the Bulldog.

The information is only coming to light now because the Florida Bulldog filed a public records request about the matter in February after being tipped off that Antonacci died in the governor’s office.

The report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) continues: “At approximately 1:46 p.m., Mr. Antonacci is observed standing up and walking out of the conference room [redacted]. … “He steadies himself on the left wall. The hall [redacted] when he falls and appears to strike his head on the door on the [redacted] (sic). There appeared to be no foul play in the Room (sic) or hallway. At approximately 2:10:05pm, FDL Comm. [Mark] Glass appears to notice Antonacci down the hallway to his aid (sic).”

The 911 call from a staffer in the governor’s office reported that someone was doing CPR and they were searching for a defibrillator. She thought he had a heart attack.

“By the time a Capitol police officer arrived a minute or two later and hooked the pulseless Antonacci up to an automated external defibrillator (AED), the machine that can administer a life-saving electrical shock to victims of sudden cardiac arrest, assessed Antonacci and advised that ‘no shock’ was needed,” the site explains.

His doctor confirmed that Antonacci had heart disease and other cardiac issues, signing off on the cause of death being related to that condition.

The local news site also observed that the report went into detail about what Antonacci was wearing, but couldn’t identify all 11 people who were in the meeting at the time. FDLE chief of staff Shane Desguin noted that he knew there was an emergency because he heard the “thud” of Antonacci hitting on the floor and then, about 25 minutes later, heard Glass shouting for help. The law enforcement official did not investigate the “thud.”

The Bulldog spoke to a Florida medical examiner who called it unusual not to have an autopsy in such a case.

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Florida’s DeSantis bans pro-Palestinian group from state campuses

Florida’s university system, working with Governor Ron DeSantis, ordered colleges on Tuesday to shut down a pro-Palestinian student organization, marking the first U.S. state to outlaw the group whose national leadership backed Hamas’ attack on Israel.

The State University System of Florida said chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had to be dismantled as part of a “crack down” in the Republican-led state on campus demonstrations that provide “harmful support for terrorist groups.”

“Based on the National SJP’s support of terrorism, in consultation with Governor DeSantis, the student chapters must be deactivated,” the system’s Chancellor Ray Rodrigues wrote in a memo to university leaders.

SJP is active in at least two Florida universities, Rodrigues said.

The University of North Florida in Jacksonville and Florida State University in Tallahassee have SJP chapters, based on Instagram sites. The National SJP did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tensions between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students have led to harassment and assaults at U.S. universities since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip.

Administrators at some U.S. universities criticized the National SJP after it called Hamas’ attack “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” and called for a “day of resistance” on Oct. 12 with demonstrations by its chapters at over 200 colleges in America and Canada.

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Here’s What the Hamas Attack Tells Us About U.S. Immigration Policy: Nothing

In the middle of his statement responding to last weekend’s barbaric attacks in Israel, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis veered sideways into a non-sequitur about American immigration policy.

In a post to X (formerly known as Twitter), DeSantis said President Joe Biden ought to freeze all foreign aid flowing to Hamas, the terrorist group responsible for Saturday’s attacks that left more than 1,000 people dead, and freeze money “made available to Iran.” Then, DeSantis added, Biden must “immediately shut down America’s wide-open southern border to ensure we are in a position to better protect Americans here at home from these real threats.”

That is…quite the jump.

Yes, it’s true that Saturday’s attack on Israel involved people crossing a border, and that immigrants coming to the U.S. also cross a border as part of that process. That’s literally the only similarity.

To be clear: Immigrants seeking to come to the U.S. to live and work are absolutely not terrorists conducting a paramilitary operation. Mexico and the U.S. are not Israel and Palestine. And, as Saturday’s attack makes obviously clear, even the most extreme measures designed to “shut down” a border can be defeated.

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The Truth About Ron DeSantis’ Fentanyl Horror Story

The second Republican debate of the 2024 presidential campaign cycle took place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Wednesday, and at various points throughout the night the topic turned to drug policy.

The candidates argued over the proliferation of fentanyl—the synthetic opioid significantly more potent than morphine or heroin that is often found mixed with other narcotics purchased on the black market. Specifically, the candidates squabbled over who would most aggressively weaponize the military and federal power in an attempt to prevent illicit fentanyl from reaching American shores.

Some of the candidates deployed anecdotes gleaned from the campaign trail of people whose loved ones died of fentanyl overdoses in order to justify increasingly oppressive drug policy. But Gov. Ron DeSantis’s example is much more complicated than he let on.

“In Florida, we had an infant, 18 months [old],” DeSantis said. “Parents rented an Airbnb, and apparently the people that had rented it before were using drugs. The infant was crawling, the toddler was crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue and died. Are we just going to sit here and let this happen, this carnage happen in our country? I am not going to do that.” As he has in the past, DeSantis used the story to illustrate the need for tougher drug and immigration policy, up to and including shooting people as they cross the border with Mexico.

DeSantis’s campaign did not respond to a clarifying question by press time, but he seemed to be referring to Enora Lavenir, the 19-month-old daughter of a French couple vacationing in Wellington, a small Florida town near West Palm Beach. The Lavenirs rented a four-bedroom house through Airbnb, where on August 7, 2021, Enora’s mother Lydie Lavenir found her unconscious and foaming at the mouth. Paramedics rushed the girl to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Last year, the Lavenirs filed a wrongful death suit against Airbnb, the property’s owners, and the most recent previous renter. The lawsuit has since been amended to add additional defendants including HomeAway, the parent company of Vrbo, another home-rental service through which the prior tenant rented the house. According to the lawsuit, “the medical examiner detected a lethal level of Fentanyl in Enora’s blood and determined that her cause of death was acute Fentanyl toxicity. Toxicology readings indicated a quick death, ruling out the possibility that Enora came into contact with Fentanyl anywhere else but in the Airbnb rental.”

Contrary to DeSantis’s statement at the debate, the lawsuit does not claim that Enora was “crawling on the carpet and ingested fentanyl residue.” In fact, the suit does not speculate exactly how Enora came into contact with the drug; it merely alleges that Airbnb and Vrbo have “known for years that drug use is prevalent in [their] properties” and “that drugs, paraphernalia, and residue are frequently left behind in rentals, that there is a substantial risk of them being left behind, and that when they are left behind they pose a fatal risk to future guests, including children and infants.”

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DeSantis Doubles Down On Opposition To Marijuana Legalization, Claiming Colorado’s Illicit Market Is ‘Bigger And More Lucrative’ After Reform

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 Republican presidential candidate, has reaffirmed that he would not legalize marijuana if elected to the White House—arguing contrary to evidence that the reform has actually increased the size of the illicit market in Colorado.

During a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday, an attendee told DeSantis that she knows people whose children developed “cannabis-induced psychosis” and asked about whether he would move to legalize or reschedule cannabis under federal law if he became president. In response, the GOP contender made clear that he “would not legalize,” echoing anti-marijuana arguments he previously made in June.

“I think what’s happened is this stuff is very potent now. I think when young people get it, I think it’s a real, real problem, and I think it’s a lot different than stuff that people were using 30, 40 years ago,” DeSantis said. “I think when kids get on that, I think it causes a lot of problems and then, of course, you know, they can throw fentanyl in any of this stuff now.”

The candidate then pivoted to a broader discussion about the harms of substance misuse, stating that there’s an “open air market” for illicit drugs in San Francisco, and that society has “totally decayed” under policies that “really help these folks use drugs.”

DeSantis did acknowledge that Floridians have access to medical cannabis under a constitutional amendment that voters approved, saying that “we abide by that” but noting that “states have handled cannabis differently” and he would not “take action now to make it even more available.”

Florida voters may have the choice to expand access regardless of the governor’s position, as the state Supreme Court is currently considering whether a marijuana legalization initiative will appear on the state’s 2024 ballot.

“I would not do that,” DeSantis said on Saturday. “And the places that legalized it like Colorado and California, you know, the argument was—and honestly it wasn’t a crazy argument—’Look, we know people are going to use marijuana. It is a drug. If you legalize it, then you can tax it, regulate it, and it’s going to end up being safer for people.’”

“But what’s happened in Colorado, the black market for marijuana is bigger and more lucrative than it was before they did the legalization,” the governor said. “So the legalization I don’t think has worked.”

DeSantis didn’t provide data or cite any sourcing to support that argument. But private and government analyses have suggested that Colorado has in fact significantly reduced the influence of the illicit market in the decade since enacting legalization.

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Ron DeSantis Says He Would Not Decriminalize Marijuana If Elected President

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, said he would not federally decriminalize marijuana if elected to the White House—arguing that cannabis use hurts the workforce, inhibits productivity and could even lead to death if contaminated.

At a campaign event in South Carolina on Thursday, a person who said they were representing wounded veterans asked DeSantis if he would “please” decriminalize cannabis as president.

The governor responded directly: “I don’t think we would do that.”

He then talked about Florida’s medical marijuana program that was enacted by voters, saying veterans are “actually allowed access” to cannabis under that model. But he said the issue is “controversial because obviously there’s some people that abuse it and are using it recreationally.”

DeSantis rattled off a number of concerns he has about cannabis use, starting with the potency of marijuana that “they’re putting on the street” and his understanding that illicit products are being laced with other drugs such as fentanyl.

“If you do something with that, it could be goodnight right then and there,” he said. “You could die just by ingesting that, so I think that that’s problematic.”

Experts and advocates have questioned law enforcement claims about the prevalence of fentanyl-tainted cannabis in the illicit market. In any case, DeSantis also didn’t acknowledge that creating a regulatory regime where marijuana is subject to testing before consumers can buy it could mitigate instances of contamination.

“I think that we have we have too many people using using drugs in this country right now. I think it hurts our workforce readiness. I think it hurts people’s ability to prosper in life,” he said, adding that people he knew in high school who used marijuana “suffered.”

“All their activities, all their grades and everything like that—so particularly for the youth, I just think we have to be united,” the candidate said. He also plugged a Florida program overseen by his wife that involves sending athletes to schools to warn students about “the stakes of using some of these drugs nowadays, and this is not something you want to mess around with.”

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Prominent DeSantis ally who shot himself dead last year was under investigation for using sold out Taylor Swift tickets to lure teen to his office and show him her breasts – then trying to buy family’s silence

The political donor behind Ron DeSantis‘s rapid rise to prominence took his own life after he was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with an underaged teen, a DailyMail.com investigation has revealed.

Kent Stermon’s suicide in December came shortly after the girl’s father turned down a ‘five-figure sum’ in a hush-money deal and reported him to the police instead, we have learned.

The prominent DeSantis ally and GOP donor, who was based in Jacksonville, Florida, was accused of having an inappropriate relationship with the girl, for whom he obtained highly sought-after Taylor Swift concert tickets which he said he’d give her if she sent him a photo of her breasts.

After the girl reluctantly complied, Stermon insisted she collect the tickets at his office – but when she turned up he refused to let her leave until she ‘showed him the real thing,’ law enforcement sources say.

The teenager balked at the idea and he eventually let her go.

She later told her boyfriend and her father about the encounter, prompting her dad to furiously confront Stermon at an arranged meeting at a diner in Atlantic Beach, according to sources. 

It was there that Stermon offered him the five-figure sum to keep quiet, but the dad refused.

Not too long after on December 8, Stermon killed himself just as Jacksonville police were launching their probe into the girl’s claims.

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