TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — There are only three days you can set off fireworks in Florida, and the next one is just around the corner.
A law signed in 2020 by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis created some clarifications on what days of the year you can go nuts and fire off whatever you want. For the holiday season, you can have the raucous rockets pop off on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s day.
The only other time launching fireworks is legal is on July 4.
Florida also has specific definitions of what exactly makes a firework a firework.
What is a firework, in Florida?
According to the Florida statutes, a firework is “any combustible or explosive composition or substance or combination of substances or, except as hereinafter provided, any article prepared for the purpose of producing a visible or audible effect by combustion, explosion, deflagration, or detonation.”
The state law lists off the following items as fireworks:
- Firecrackers
- Torpedoes
- Skyrockets
- Roman candles
- Dago Bombs
Florida’s Division of the State Fire Marshal says the statutes don’t include sparklers as a firework, and also has exceptions for other devices like toy pistols, toy guns, toy canes, and items where paper caps with “25 hundredths grains or less of explosive compounds are used.”
As long as a hand can’t come into contact with the caps when they explode, or the pistol paper caps only have 20 hundredths of grains of explosive mixture, they’re legal to fire off year round.
If something has explosives to fire up into the sky, using flammable compounds, tablets, or any explosive substances. This also includes blank cartridges and toy cannons where explosives are used, and the types of balloons which need fire to propel them.
Due to the regulations, pop-its, snaps, and other tiny TNT boxes are fine, and so are snake or glow worms, smoke devices, trick noisemakers, party poppers, booby traps, trick matches, a cigarette load, and auto burglar alarms are all fine to 365 days a year.
According to the American Pyrotechnic Association, a trade organization for the U.S. fireworks industry, sale of consumer fireworks amounted to $2.2 billion in 2021. The industry has seen revenue grow every year since 2000, according to the APA.
