Florida’s hemp industry has allegedly pledged to donate $5m to the state’s Republican Party after Governor Ron DeSantis moved to veto a bill that would decimate the sector.
Last month, Business of Cannabis reported that DeSantis, an outspoken opponent of cannabis legalization, may have become an unlikely savior of the state’s hemp industry.
In March this year, Senate Bill 1698 was passed by Florida lawmakers, and is set to be enforced in October.
Designed to regulate the flourishing intoxicating hemp market, the bill would ban the sale of products like Delta-8 and Delta-10, but hemp businesses in the state have warned that this would also severely impact their industry, thought to be worth around $10bn in Florida in 2022.
CBS News Miami reported that DeSantis planned to veto the controversial bill in the hopes of garnering support from the hemp industry against adult-use legalization, and bringing them on side to finance his campaign against it.
After successfully vetoing Senate Bill 1698, CBD News Miami has now published messages from a WhatsApp group with over 1000 members titled ‘Save Hemp Florida’, suggesting that millions of dollars were pledged by industry executives to fund the move.
On June 27th, some three weeks after the veto, messages were published in the group stating: “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this. He chose Hemp as his champion, and now we’ve got to deliver.”
Introductory messages are understood to list a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida, while several members have suggested that his office was closely monitoring the account to see which businesses were donating funds.
“We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” one hemp executive wrote.
Further messages suggest that $2m has already been donated in sums ranging from $500 to $250,000.
In a statement to CBS News Miami, a spokesman for DeSantis said any suggestion that he vetoed the bill for donations to the party was ‘false’, adding that the bill was vetoed because it would impose ‘debilitating regulatory burdens on small businesses’.
They also denied that the office was monitoring donations.
