Florida House Speaker Danny Perez has named State Rep. Michelle Salzman the manager of a working group that will tackle hemp regulation.
To: Members of the Florida House of Representatives
From: Daniel Perez, Speaker
Date:February 26, 2025
Re: Establishment of Combined Workgroup on Hemp
Our goal this term has been to find new and different ways to engage you as Members and to arm you with the tools and information that you might need to navigate the legislative process. Every session there are a handful of complicated, intensely lobbied issues that fall outside the personal and professional experience of most of our members. These issues can be difficult to navigate in the confines of a committee meeting or a bill presentation. One such issue that has repeatedly come up in conversations that many of you have had with members of the Leadership Team has been the regulation of hemp.
We anticipate multiple bills will be filed on hemp regulation this Session and that there will be a great deal of activity by advocates on both sides of the issue. In order to better arm you with information, and after consultation with the various chairs involved, we have created a Combined Workgroup on Hemp composed of members of the Industries & Professional Activities Subcommittee and the Housing, Agriculture & Tourism Subcommittee. This workgroup will have 24 members: 12 members from each subcommittee, who have been chosen by the subcommittee chairs. I have appointed Representative Michelle Salzman to serve as the Combined Workgroup Manager. It will last for a duration of seven days beginning on March 3, 2025.
The workgroup will focus on gaining knowledge related to hemp and the hemp industry, and will invite experts, regulators, and industry leaders to share the full range of perspectives and opinions. The workgroup will not consider legislation or specific policy proposals nor will it be a forum for generic public testimony. Those activities are reserved for formal House committee meetings. Instead, the workgroup’s goal will be to gain knowledge and understanding of the subject matter and, at the conclusion of its work, the workgroup will identify other information or resources that it believes would be beneficial to assist Members in working through this issue. The workgroup’s exploration of this issue should be thorough and balanced.
Because of the way this process sometimes works, and the tendency of lobbyists and advocates to insinuate secret meanings, let me be perfectly clear: there are no signals being sent. House Leadership has not adopted any position on this issue nor are we laying the predicate to do so in the future. We are not endorsing any particular bill, position, industry, or perspective. How – or even whether – we proceed with legislation on this issue this Session will be determined by all of you.
We hope this workgroup will be a useful start to a productive conversation.
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