What Is Amendment 9? Florida Passes Bill Banning Offshore Drilling, Indoor Vaping

The Ninth Amendment on the Florida 2018 ballot was passed Tuesday with over 60 percent votes. The new law bans oil and gas drilling in offshore areas, and also prohibits use of e-cigarettes and vaping devices indoors unless in a private residence or hotel rooms allowing indoor smoking.

The law prohibits drilling for exploration or extraction of oil and natural gas in state waters. It applies to the beaches and waters 3.5 miles off Florida’s Atlantic Ocean and 10.4 miles off the Gulf of Mexico. It also bans loud underwater seismic testing that causes death of dolphins and whales, Click Orlando reported.

The Florida Petroleum Council and Vets4Energy Florida were among the top groups fighting against the amendment. “If this amendment passes, we will forego not only a safe process for developing the energy we depend on, but also the opportunity to add more than $2.6 billion to our economy over the next two decades and provide jobs to more than 56,000 people through drilling in state and federal waters,” C.S. Bennet, a member of Vets4Energy Florida told Florida League of Cities, NWF Daily News reported.

The Florida Wildlife Federation, on the other hand, supports the amendment.

“We believe passage of this amendment is necessary because the legislature as late as 2009 seriously considered allowing this to happen. Putting this ban in the Constitution permanently protects against oil and gas exploration and drilling in Florida waters from the beach to the federal boundary. We don’t need to have oil and gas drilling closer to our state waters than it is now and we don’t need to industrialize our state waters,” its president Manley Fuller said.

The vaping ban builds on the state’s already existing ban on smoking at work and a several public places. Standalone bars, stores selling tobacco, vaping devices and private residences that are not being used for child care, adult care or health care come under the exception list.

Former state Senate President Don Gaetz had said several tobacco companies would also protest against the law. “The tobacco companies understand their new business model has to include vaping. I can see big tobacco money coming into play,” he said.

The other law that was passed with 66 percent of the vote Tuesday was Amendment 7. The ballot proposal bundled together three separate issues. The first item grants mandatory payment of death benefits and waiver of certain educational expenses to qualifying survivors of first responders and military members who die performing official duties.

The second required university trustees to agree by a two-thirds super-majority to raise or impose legislatively authorized fees, Miami Herald reported.

The third proposal established a state college system in the Florida Constitution. Though the Florida State universities are under the Constitution, the state colleges are not. Hence, the constitution allows each state college to be governed by a local board of trustees.