Ohio Lawmakers Target Voter-Approved Cannabis Legalization

Before the bill was passed by the Senate, Republican state Sen. Steve Huffman, the sponsor of the bill, defended his efforts to change legislation approved by the voters of Ohio, according to a report from cannabis news outlet Marijuana Moment.

“Senate Bill 56 is a great bill because it’s reasonable, appropriate, it cuts down on the illicit marijuana market and it’s truly about protection and safety of children,” Huffman said on the floor, adding that “we have never known exactly why the voters voted for the initiated statute.”

“We’ll never know—but we do know that they should have known at least that they were voting to put it into the revised code—not in the Constitution, but in the Ohio Revised Code,” he said, defending efforts to change Issue 2. “Voters were clear in their desire to access safe, accessible adult-use marijuana. Senate Bill 56 respects those pleas.”

But Democratic Sen. Bill DeMora told his colleagues he opposed the bill, saying that the legislation “goes against the will of the voters and will kill the adult industry in Ohio.”

“In my eyes at least, a top priority of any legislation dealing with marijuana should be to preserve the will of the people. The people made their will known,” he said. “The sponsor doesn’t think that we know what people were voting for, but I have a good idea after all the testimony we’ve had in the last several years about marijuana.”

“They wanted higher THC limits. They wanted the ability to grow 12 plants at their home. They wanted level three craft growers. They wanted common sense public smoking restrictions. And they wanted taxes to help the municipalities addiction and substance abuse efforts and those that were affected by criminalization,” DeMora continued. “This bill does none of those things. In fact, it makes all those provisions worse.”

The Ohio Senate approved Senate Bill 56 by a vote of 23-9 on February 26. The measure has been referred to the Ohio House of Representatives, where it will be considered by the House Judiciary Committee.

Separate House Bill Also Seeks Changes To Issue 2

On March 6, GOP Rep. Brian Stewart, the chair of the House Finance Committee, introduced House Bill 160, a separate measure that would make changes to Issue 2. Like Senate Bill 56, the bill also reduces the THC cap on cannabis concentrates at 70%. Unlike the Senate bill, however, Stewart’s bill does not cut the limit on the number of cannabis plants that can be grown by home cultivators.

“That bill respects the will of the voters, while also acknowledging that by passing initiated statute, backers and supporters of Issues 2 understood and accepted that marijuana law would remain subject to certain reasonable reforms by the Ohio Legislature,” Stewart said about the legislation.

House Bill 160 is awaiting committee assignment in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Cannabis Policy Reform Advocates Oppose Efforts To Amend Issue 2

Last week, representatives of drug policy reform and civil liberties organizations held a virtual meeting to oppose efforts by Ohio Republicans to change the state’s legalization of cannabis through Issue 2. The webinar, which was attended by leaders from the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) and the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, was held online on March 13. During the online meeting, speakers said the legislation to amend Issue 2 are efforts to deny the will of the people.

“Lawmakers in Ohio had years to craft legislation to legalize the adult-use marijuana market,” said Paul Armentano, NORML’s deputy director. “They refused to do so, and they left that decision ultimately in the hands of the electorate. And it is a slap in the face to those voters—the 57 percent of Ohioans that voted for Issue 2—for lawmakers to come back and now play Monday morning quarterback.”

“This issue in Ohio has been one of NORML’s lead priorities this session,” Armentano added, “and trying to make sure that the will of the voters in Ohio—and in several other states—is in fact respected.”

Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for MPP, noted that the bills would enact new criminal penalties, characterizing the proposals as “basically a minefield of recriminalization.”

“If you were to pass a joint or share your homegrown cannabis or share your cannabis with your spouse or your roommate, you’d be a criminal again,” she said. “If you got your cannabis from anywhere other than an Ohio dispensary or your own personally grown cannabis by yourself—not even your roommate or your spouse—you’d be a criminal again.”

Ohio resident Cat Packer, the DPA’s director of drug markets and legal regulation, said that the new restrictions proposed by lawmakers are “not normal.”

Ohio voters “created this bundle of rights for individuals 21 and older to ensure that activities like possession, like transfer, aren’t criminalized,” she argued, according to a report from Marijuana Moment. “And what we’re seeing here, being introduced through these various pieces of legislation, would put Ohio as an outlier amongst many or all of the jurisdictions that have passed adult-use legalization thus far.”