ABSTRACT

In January 2014, the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of proponents of a state constitutional amendment that would have made the use and distribution of medical marijuana legal in the state. In a split decision, the court rejected the initiative opponents’ claim that the amendment’s wording included too many loopholes and would enable anyone willing to fake a “debilitating” medical condition to obtain marijuana. At the time of the state Supreme Court ruling, polls showed the amendment was likely to pass with the required 60 percent of the vote. The Miami Herald reported that a recent Public Policy Polling survey had shown that 65 percent of voters were likely to vote in favor of the amendment; other polls put support for the measure as high as 82 percent (Caputo & Klas, 2014). Later surveys, taken during the spring and summer of 2014, suggested that as many as 90 percent of Floridians supported the legalization of medical marijuana in general, but by October, different surveys, focusing on the specific language of the proposed amendment, produced widely varying estimates of support. A poll sponsored by the University of North Florida suggested that 67 percent of voters approved of the measure, but a Miami Herald/University of Florida survey concluded that the amendment was likely to fail, with only 48 percent of voter support (Pollick, 2014). In the final two months before the election, both proponents and opponents of the amendment turned to advertising, most of it on television, to

win voters to their side. Ad spending was not balanced, however. The primary opposition group, Drug Free Florida, outspent United For Care, which had gotten the amendment onto the ballot, by a ratio of 10-to-1, pouring most of its $6.34 million war chest into advertising; $5.5 million of the money came from Republican casino owner Sheldon Adelson, a Las Vegas, NV, resident whom Forbes magazine identified as the tenth richest person in the world (Pollick, 2014). His donation allowed Drug Free Florida to spend $5 million on “Vote No on 2” ads, such as one stating, “They don’t call it the Drug-Dealer Protection Act, but they should” (Pollick, 2014, para. 17). The ad claimed that the amendment would allow felons, including drug dealers, to dispense medical marijuana with no medical training; in reality, the amendment required the Florida Department of Health to develop regulations regarding caregivers, patients, doctors, retailers and growers. United For Care had far less money for advertising, having spent much of the $4 million it had raised getting the proposal onto the ballot (Pollick, 2014). Instead of focusing on expensive television ad buys, United For Care turned to digital banner and video advertising carefully targeted to people deemed to be the measure’s most likely supporters and those most likely to be persuadable. In particular, they targeted senior citizens likely to be open to the pro-medical marijuana arguments, based on data modeling by United For Care’s media strategy consultants. The digital advertising was effective, according to a post-election day survey. Among those who saw the online ads, 65 percent voted in favor of Amendment 2; among those who did not see the ads, only 53 percent voted for the measure. Among seniors, who represented one-third of those who recalled seeing the online ads, 65 percent voted in favor of the amendment. (“Digital Advertising,” 2014).