Trump Backs Pro-Marijuana-Legalization Lawmaker To Lead Republican National Committee

President Donald Trump has thrown his support behind Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters (R)—a vocal proponent of marijuana legalization—to lead the national Republican Party.

The president officially endorsed Gruters for chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in a lengthy social media post last Thursday in which he also endorsed current RNC Chairman Michael Whatley in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat representing North Carolina.

Trump said Gruters, who formerly headed the GOP in Florida, would be a fitting replacement to lead the national party.

“I have somebody who will do a wonderful job as the Chairman of the RNC,” Trump wrote. “His name is, Joe Gruters, and he will have my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

The president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has served as an RNC co-chair.

Notably, Trump had also endorsed Gruters to be Florida’s chief financial officer, but last week 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 last week, “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.”

At the same, 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 fro 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.

The Republican Party of Florida, which opposed the cannabis legalization measure on the state’s 2024 ballot, last week cheered Trump’s endorsement of Gruters to lead the national party.

“As our former chairman,” the group said of Gruters on social media after Trump’s announcement, “we know that he has what it takes to bring the GOP to new heights. He’s proven, tested, and ready to lead.”

While DeSantis’s comments on Amendment 3 earlier this month 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.”

After the legalization amendment narrowly failed last November, some lawmakers—including Ingoglia, the governor’s new CFO appointee—introduced legislation making it harder to put voter-led initiatives on the ballot. While sponsors didn’t explicitly say the proposals were a response to any particular issue, arguments about the need to change the process were frequently heard in the run-up to votes on marijuana and abortion rights measures.

In May, DeSantis signed one of those bills into law last month to impose significant restrictions on the ability to put initiatives on the ballot—a plan that could impair efforts to let voters decide on marijuana legalization in coming years.

Meanwhile last week, another Trump pick, Terrence Cole, was sworn in as the next administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Cole has previously voiced concerns about the dangers of marijuana and linked its use to higher suicide risk among youth.

Though Cole said during a confirmation hearing in April that examining the government’s pending marijuana rescheduling proposal would be “one of my first priorities” after taking office, marijuana didn’t appear on a list of Cole’s “strategic priorities” released last week. Instead it listed anti-trafficking enforcement, Mexican cartels, the fentanyl supply chain, drug-fueled violence, cryptocurrency, the dark web and a host of other matters.

Separately, the House Appropriations Committee last week approved a spending bill that contains provisions to block the Justice Department from rescheduling marijuana.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was previously vocal about his support for legalizing cannabis, as well as psychedelics therapy. But during his Senate confirmation process in February, he said that he would defer to DEA on marijuana rescheduling in his new role.

Trump picked former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) to run DOJ, and the Senate confirmed that choice. During her confirmation hearings, Bondi declined to say how she planned to navigate key marijuana policy issues. And as state attorney general, she opposed efforts to legalize medical cannabis.

Amid the stalled marijuana rescheduling process that’s carried over from the last presidential administration, congressional researchers recently reiterated that lawmakers could enact the reform themselves with “greater speed and flexibility” if they so choose, while potentially avoiding judicial challenges.

A newly formed coalition of professional athletes and entertainers, led by retired boxer Mike Tyson, also sent a letter to Trump earlier this month—thanking him for past clemency actions while emphasizing the opportunity he has to best former President Joe Biden by rescheduling marijuana, expanding pardons and freeing up banking services for licensed cannabis businesses.