John Morgan Puts $2.8 Million into Medical Marijuana Effort

Looks like John Morgan really wants to see medical marijuana get put on the ballot in November -- so badly, in fact, that the Orlando-based uber trial lawyer pumped$2.8 million into the ballot effort during the fall.

Campaign finance records showed Morgan spent $2 million in December on a signature gathering firm, PCI Consultants Inc. The California-based firm is no stranger to collecting signatures -- according to its website, PCI has gathered more than 44 million signatures and qualified hundreds of state and local initiatives over the last 22 years.

According to the report, John Morgan and his family have accounted for funding 83 percentof the effort's budget.

People United for Medical Marijuana is ramping up its efforts to collect the necessary 683,000 signatures by the Feb. 1 deadline. Just last week, Ben Pollara told Sunshine State News that the group was close to collecting over a million signatures for the petition. As of Monday evening,414,075 of those signatures had been verified.

The group has to collect enough signatures in14 of Florida's 27 congressional districts. Monday's numbers showed People United had gathered a little over half of the signatures needed in only nine districts. The South Florida, Tampa Bay area and the Orlando area had all collected the most signatures at that time.

If the group does meet the requirement for signatures, the Florida Supreme Court would need to declare whether or not the ballot language meets legal muster before medical marijuana makes it onto the ballot come November.