Chemtrails over the Gulf of America Get ready for this Florida legislative session.

The Florida Legislature has a long history of coming up with bills to fix problems that don’t exist, while ignoring myriad problems that do exist.

Last year’s session had a memorable example: the Cocaine Bear Bill.

It wasn’t officially known as that. But when the sponsor introduced a bill to allow people to kill black bears in self-defense — something already allowed by Florida law — he explained that this wasn’t designed with your average bear in mind.

“We’re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they’re standing in your living room, growling and tearing your house apart,” Jason Shoaf, R-Port St. Joe, said in a committee meeting.

As I wrote at the time, there didn’t seem to be a single documented incident involving one of the state’s more than 4,000 black bears and crack cocaine. Politicians were another story. 

More:A Florida bill takes on cocaine bears. What about snakes on planes and sharknados?

But while the closest we’ve come to a problem with crack bears might be watching the 2023 comedy horror movie “Cocaine Bear,” our state legislature didn’t laugh off this bill in 2024. The House and Senate passed it. And the governor signed it into law last summer.

So while Floridians could take comfort in knowing they could defend themselves if a bear on crack showed up at their home, at the same time some of those homes were “under water,” in some cases financially, in others literally.

That’s a tough act to follow.

But there are signs the 2025 Florida Legislature might be up to the task. And not just because the warmup included a special session that led to an immigration “crackdown,” which conveniently avoided actually cracking down much on employers. Or even because legislators already have proposed mandating changing the “Gulf of Mexico” to “Gulf of America” in all official state documents and maps.

This year — the year after a devastating hurricane season — we have the Hurricane Conspiracy Bill.

More:‘Others would call it conspiracy theories’: Florida anti-chemtrail bill advances. What that means

OK, it’s officially titled the Geoengineering and Weather Modifications Activities bill. And on its surface, it might not have the same absurdity as a Cocaine Bear Bill.

But they are, to a degree, companion bills. And by that I mean they’re both sold to fellow legislators with theories seemingly straight out of wacky movies and conspiracy memes.

While the Cocaine Bear Bill didn’t actually mention bears on crack (but the sponsor did), the Hurricane Conspiracy Bill doesn’t actually mention “chemtrails” — but the sponsor did.

“Chemtrails” are the subject of a long-running conspiracy theory related to the contrails, or condensation trails, left by aircraft. Conspiracy theorists say that some of these lingering cloudy trails aren’t simply harmless, or even a reminder of the harm being done to the atmosphere by air travel. They say that the government and/or nefarious people are very intentionally spreading toxic chemicals for a variety of goals, from mind control to weather control.

The latter became a hot topic after the last hurricane season, with some — even some elected officials — blaming chemtrails for the devastation.

So last November, after that hurricane season, Florida Sen. Ileana Garcia, R-Miami, filed Senate Bill 56. She didn’t put the “chemtrails” in the tex of the bill. But she shared social media posts about it and then referred to it in the committee hearing, saying constituents had raised concerns about those cloudy trails behind planes.

“Let’s call a spade a spade: chemtrails,” she said. “That’s the term that the conspiracy theorists are coined with. But think about what the concerns are: health risks … including respiratory issues. I get a lot of those complaints. Also allergies, environmental impact, concerns regarding possible soil and water contamination, harming wildlife, disrupting ecosystems, government transparency as a whole, government efficiency.”

The concerns she mentioned — environmental impacts, health concerns, soil and water contamination, government transparency — all are quite valid. But again and again state leaders have rolled over to lobbyists, developers and big business, at the expense of these very issues.

So while there are glimmers of hope for this session — see the bill to protect our state parks from a repeat of last year’s attempt to develop them — there also are plenty of reasons to be concerned about more of the same this year.

When I first saw headlines that said a new Florida bill would prohibit releasing things into the atmosphere that affect the weather, for a split second I thought: A leader in Florida is taking a surprisingly bold stand against CO2 emissions that affect climate.

Silly me. This has nothing to do with that — something scientists say is happening.

Part of the irony: Garcia made it to Tallahassee in 2020 by siding with those who were saying climate change was a hoax. She defeated the incumbent, Jose Javier Rodriguez, by 32 votes (after a sham candidate, a machine-parts dealer with the same last name as her opponent, was paid to run as a third candidate and received more than 6,000 votes).

Rodriguez had emphasized concerns about climate change and rising seas in Florida. In the Capitol, he was known to wear a suit and tie with rain boots, emblazoned with the hashtag #ActOnClimateFL.

Now that vulnerable part of this vulnerable state is represented by someone who has been dismissive of the idea that what we’re putting in the air is influencing the weather — unless, apparently, we’re talking chemtrails. Then we need a bill.

This, of course, isn’t the only very Florida bill being proposed. Investigative reporter Jason Garcia, the publisher of “Seeking Rents,” wrote a piece with the headline, “Florida is about to have its stupidest session ever.”

This is saying something.

So in advance of the session which officially opens March 4, allow me to raise a concern that nobody seems to have mentioned yet. What if the chemtrails aren’t designed to control humans and/or the weather? What if they’re designed to unleash the cocaine bears?

Sure, we now can defend ourselves against such bears. But just to be safe, maybe we need the ultimate companion legislation: the Chemtrail Bear Bill.

mwoods@jacksonville.com

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