ST. PETERSBURG, FLORIDA — Richard Ellis Spurrier, 67, stood downtown on Christmas and handed marijuana to strangers because, he told police, it was Christmas. Officers found 45 grams on him near Second Street and Central Avenue around 11:30 p.m., shake still hanging off his right sleeve, a digital scale, a prescription bottle with his name, a glass pipe, and a sword hidden in his walking cane.
He was charged with possession with intent to distribute and possession of drug paraphernalia, then released on his own recognizance on the condition he stay out of that block.
Florida has a long bench of men who will not stop offering officers a bowl. Arthur Carracino flagged down Flagler County deputies in May 2019, showed them his plant, and asked them to smoke with him. They arrested him instead.
Medical marijuana had been legal in Florida since the 2016 ballot measure. Recreational use was the fight that ate the next decade. Amendment 3, on November 5, 2024, would have let adults 21 and older possess up to three ounces. It took about 56 percent — a majority, short of the 60 percent supermajority Florida demands to change its constitution. Gov. Ron DeSantis spent state muscle killing it. Trulieve, the state’s largest medical operator, sank more than $140 million into Smart & Safe Florida. The committee tried again for 2026. State election officials threw out petition batches, courts backed the DeSantis administration, and in early February 2026 the Department of State listed the recreational initiative among 22 citizen amendments that had failed to qualify. Smart & Safe called the call premature and said 1.4 million signatures would hold once counted.
Floridians Against Recreational Marijuana was already in the field in 2019. Campaign manager Brian Swensen promised the measure would raise health-care prices, kill jobs, and soak taxpayers. Senator Marco Rubio, on the 2016 trail, called pot “as insidious as alcohol” and said there is “no positive impact to using marijuana” unless the FDA turns it into medicine.
A majority of Florida voters have already said yes. The constitution’s 60-percent wall and the governor’s office keep saying no. Spurrier’s Christmas giveaway is still a crime in the Sunshine State.
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