A Florida grand jury says $10M meant for poor kids' health care funded the fight against legal weed

A Tallahassee grand jury concluded on August 27 that $10 million in taxpayer money — originally part of a $67 million Centene Corp. Medicaid settlement meant to fund health coverage for low-income kids — was misappropriated through the Hope Florida Foundation, a charity tied to First Lady Casey DeSantis.

The money trail: Hope Florida handed out two $5 million grants to Secure Florida's Future and Save Our Society From Drugs, which together moved $8.5 million to a political committee called Keep Florida Clean. That committee then sent $7 million to the Republican Party of Florida and $1.23 million to the Florida Freedom Fund — both of which helped fund the 2024 campaign against Amendment 3, the adult-use legalization measure that won 55.9% of the vote but fell short of Florida's 60% threshold.

Despite naming the scheme and identifying officials — including then-Attorney General Ashley Moody and current AG James Uthmeier — as aware of the fund transfers, the grand jury said it found "insufficient evidence to charge anyone criminally," and that no one would take responsibility for the original decision to route the money to Hope Florida.

For an industry that's watched Amendment 3 fall two points short before, this is confirmation of something operators suspected rather than a surprise: state health-settlement dollars, not just industry donors, helped finance the opposition. With Florida's legalization fight expected to return to the ballot, that receipt is now part of the public record — even if nobody's paying for it.