Privacy Policy

Plain-English Preamble

What this policy actually means in practice

Most privacy policies are written for two audiences — lawyers and regulators — and the result is a document that the people who actually read the site cannot understand. FloridaMJ takes the opposite approach. The binding legal text appears in numbered sections below, but this preamble explains, in plain language, what we collect, why we collect it, what we do with it, and what we never do with it. If anything in the legal text below contradicts this preamble, the preamble is the safer interpretation: we will not do less for your privacy than what is described here.

FloridaMJ is a directory, not a patient-records system

The single most important fact about our data practices: FloridaMJ has no connection to the Florida Medical Marijuana Use Registry^[2]. We have never had access to MMUR records, qualifying conditions, physician certifications, or any patient's purchase history^[1]. Dispensaries do not share point-of-sale data with us. Qualified physicians do not share patient lists with us. Nothing about your relationship with the medical program — past, present, or future — flows through this site. The directory is a published reference, not a clinical record system, and we are structurally incapable of becoming one.

Browsing the site is anonymous by default

You can read every page on FloridaMJ — every dispensary listing, every statute summary, every guide, every blog post — without creating an account, providing an email address, or identifying yourself. The only data we automatically collect is what your browser sends to every website on the internet: an IP address, a user-agent string identifying your browser and operating system, and a record of which pages you visited and when. We use that information in aggregate to understand traffic patterns, identify broken pages, and improve performance. We do not attempt to identify individual readers from anonymous browsing data, and we do not sell anonymous traffic data to third parties.

Personal information is collected only when you provide it

The handful of features that do require personal information — newsletter subscriptions, contact-form submissions, operator listing applications, optional reader accounts — only receive what you choose to enter. A newsletter signup gets your email address and nothing else. A contact form gets the name, email, and message you typed. An operator listing application gets the business information necessary to verify the listing against state registries^[2][3]. We collect the minimum necessary for each feature and do not augment it with third-party data.

We never sell personal information

FloridaMJ does not sell, rent, lease, or trade personal information to third parties for any purpose. We do not participate in advertising data exchanges, behavioral retargeting networks, or audience marketplaces. The only third parties that ever receive personal information are the service providers we use to operate the site itself — our hosting provider, our email service for newsletter delivery, our analytics provider — and each of those operates under contractual confidentiality terms that restrict them to providing the service we hired them for.

Cookies are minimal and you control them

FloridaMJ uses cookies for two purposes: to remember a logged-in account session (only relevant if you create an account) and to support traffic analytics. We do not use advertising cookies, social-media tracking pixels, or cross-site behavioral profiles. Your browser's cookie controls work normally; rejecting cookies will sign you out of any active session but will not otherwise impair the site.

Your rights are honored regardless of state of residence

California's CCPA, Virginia's VCDPA, Colorado's CPA, and several other state privacy laws grant residents formal rights to access, correct, and delete personal information. FloridaMJ extends those same rights to every reader, regardless of state of residence. To exercise any right, email hello@orlandomj.com with the request. We respond within 30 days.

Cannabis-specific privacy concerns

Cannabis users face privacy concerns that ordinary website visitors do not. A federal employer running a routine background check, an immigration officer reviewing a green-card application, an insurance underwriter assessing a policy, a state-level firearms transaction — any of these can be affected by evidence that someone uses cannabis, even where the use is legal under state law^[1]. FloridaMJ is conscious of these stakes. We do not log, retain, or share any information that could establish a particular reader's relationship with the medical program or any specific operator, and we structure newsletter content and listings so that no information from this site, on its own, would identify a reader as a current cannabis consumer.