The Republican National Committee has a new leader who supports legalizing marijuana and who has discussed his own use of cannabis products.
Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters (R), who campaigned for a cannabis legalization initiative on his state’s ballot last year, was elected chairman of the RNC at a party meeting in Atlanta on Friday.
President Donald Trump officially endorsed Gruters for the position in a lengthy social media post last month in which he also endorsed outgoing RNC Chairman Michael Whatley in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat representing North Carolina.
In a speech after winning the vote on Friday in which he ran unopposed, Gruters said that “today is not about one person, it is about our mission.”
“The midterms are ahead, where we must expand our majority in the House and the Senate and continue electing Republicans nationwide,” he said. “And then we march forward toward the presidential election, where the stakes could not be higher.”
Notably, Trump had also endorsed Gruters to be Florida’s chief financial officer, but Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) instead appointed state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia (R) to fill the role until the next election.
The governor was critical of Gruters’s advocacy for marijuana legalization through last year’s Amendment 3, an industry-backed initiative that would have legalized and regulated cannabis for adults in the state.
Ultimately, Amendment 3 failed to reach the necessary 60 percent threshold for passage under state law, though it received a majority of the statewide vote.
“Gruters sided with the mega-weed company Trulieve and was joining with liberal Democrats to try to do it,” DeSantis said at a press event, “so his record is contrary to what we told the voters we’d do.”
DeSantis told reporters at the time that “if George Washington rose from the dead and came back and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you appoint Joe Gruters CFO?’ My response would be: ‘No, I can’t do that.’”
DeSantis was a staunch opponent of Amendment 3, but Trump notably supported it. Ahead of endorsing the measure, then-candidate Trump met with Gruters and, separately, Trulieve CEO Kim Rivers.
“We discussed the policy at length. Here in Florida, it’s common sense,” Gruters said last fall. “President Trump is certainly trying to make inroads with the younger demographics, where I think a lot of these voters—certainly undecided ones—where this can make a big difference. And I think that certainly had a role.”
Gruters told Marijuana Moment at the time that there were also “a lot of people that were trying to talk [Trump] out of saying anything nice” about legalization.
“Like any major policy decision, he’s going to get input from lots of people,” the state senator said, “but I’m thankful to be in the circle where I could offer my opinion, and I think he values it.”
Gruters appeared in a TV ad for the cannabis campaign.
“Florida is the freest state in America, but we still have outdated marijuana laws obstructing that freedom,” he said in the spot. “Amendment 3 would give adults back that freedom and give Florida a chance to legalize marijuana responsibly. Florida is the only state that can do this right from the right. Vote ‘yes’ on Amendment 3.”
In addition to backing last year’s Amendment 3, Gruters also sponsored additional marijuana reform bills earlier this year.
SB 546 would have allowed state-registered medical marijuana patients to grow up to two cannabis plants per household for their own use. SB 552 would have added to the state’s list of qualifying medical marijuana conditions those “for which a patient has been prescribed an opioid drug” and called on regulators to make rules allowing out-of-state patients to access Florida’s medical marijuana program.
In February, Gruters said on a podcast that there’s “not a lot of interest in my Republican colleagues to move anything related to marijuana whatsoever.”
In the interview, the senator likened home cannabis cultivation to home beer brewing or winemaking.
“Florida is a freedom state. I believe in freedom,” he said. “If you really want to do that stuff, and you want to take the time, then by all means go and do it, as long as you do it in a regulated way to where nobody else is getting hurt and you’re taking responsibility.”
Gruters also revealed that on his birthday a few years ago, while vacationing in Las Vegas with his wife, the couple decided to try some infused gummies, he said.
“All I’ll say is, I thought everybody was looking at me,” the lawmaker recalled. “I was very thirsty, and I told my wife, I said, ‘You’ve got to get me back to our hotel room quick!”
While Trump has welcomed into his administration a number of marijuana legalization skeptics, his support for Gruters to lead the national GOP could potentially elevate cannabis reform as a priority for Republican Party officials.
While more and more Republican voters in recent years have expressed support for legalization in polls, GOP leadership has largely remained opposed.
A survey conducted by a Republican pollster affiliated with Trump that was released in April found that a majority of Republicans back a variety of cannabis reforms, including rescheduling. And, notably, they’re even more supportive of allowing states to legalize marijuana without federal interference compared to the average voter.
While DeSantis’s comments on Amendment 3 framed the legalization measure as a partisan issue, the campaign in fact divided Republicans—including DeSantis and Trump.
While the president threw his support behind legalization, saying it would be “very good” for the state, DeSantis aggressively campaigned against it, telling constituents that the measure was written by self-interested marijuana companies in an effort to corner the market. He also repeatedly argued that it would upend Florida culture, filling the streets with the smell of cannabis smoke and turning the state into something closer to California, Colorado or New York.
The governor also faced allegations of weaponizing state departments to push anti-legalization narratives through various advertisements—prompting one Democratic state senator to sue over what he claimed was an unconstitutional appropriation of tax dollars. A Florida judge later dismissed that lawsuit.
Ultimately, Amendment 3 failed to reach the necessary 60 percent threshold for passage under state law, though it received a majority of the statewide vote. Trump’s endorsement evidently had little effect, according to a poll released in the wake of the election, despite earlier predictions by associates like Roger Stone that his blessing would “guarantee victory.”
