Ohio’s marijuana legalization law went into effect on Thursday. But as lawmakers continue pushing for changes, advocates are calling attention to the key provisions of an Senate-passed proposition. They say it threatens to perpetuate crime and undermine social justice while it backs away from other significant alterations originally proposed like removing home cultivation rights.
On Thursday, the House held a second public hearing about a separate bill to amend the Legalization Law.
After discussing the revised initiated statute for weeks, Republicans unveiled a bill this week which would have eliminated home grows, increased marijuana taxes, and criminalized possession of cannabis if it wasn’t purchased from licensed retailers. These retailers couldn’t be open for at least a year. Consequently, some advocates were initially encouraged when a significantly improved version, which included the restoration of rights to home grow and the addition of expungements, was released. The Senate quickly passed the revised version on Wednesday with nearly unanimous support.
Equity advocates claim that the short discussion in the committee before the vote by the entire chamber – which also coincided with the House’s consideration of another GOP-led bill – did not accurately reflect the substantive amendments to the law passed by voters, who supported it 57 percent.
The senators have reversed their position on home cultivation, but only limit households to six plants instead of 12. They also propose opening sales of adult cannabis products from existing dispensaries in a more expedited time frame. However, there are other concerns, including the diverting of marijuana tax revenues for a fund for social equity, the restrictive rules on where cannabis can be consumed, the THC limits, and the removal certain anti-discrimination provisions.
This is all happening as the key elements of the legalization act have already come into effect. Adults 21 years and older can now possess up to 2,5 ounces and grow up six plants. Republican leaders, such as Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, tried to make changes to the program by the Thursday effective date.
The Senate’s legislation included expungements that were not in Issue 2 because of the single-subject ballot initiative rule. While one senator called the relief “automatic” on Wednesday in committee, the bill says only that the attorney general must create a procedure to reimburse people who proactively petition the court to expunge prior convictions for possession of up to 2,5 ounces cannabis.
A second issue with the revised measure is the removal of all social equity funding from the marijuana tax revenues. The law, as passed by the voters, calls for 36 percent to be used for equity and job placement. The Senate bill completely eliminates this fund and distributes the revenue to law enforcement training.
The legislation also prohibits the sharing of marijuana among adults, mandates strict rules for transporting and storing marijuana, imposes a mandatory minimum three-day jail sentence on passengers who consume marijuana in a vehicle, and sets a limit on the THC content of marijuana products, which some believe is incompatible with legal availability of flowers.
“This bill is a slap on the face for Ohio voters, who decidedly approved a voter initiative, which, while imperfect, was based on social equity,” Cat Packer said to Marijuana Moment. She is vice chair of the Cannabis Regulators Of Color Coalition (CRCC), and director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s (DPA) drug markets and legal regulations.
This bill, instead of advancing social justice, would strengthen the War on Drugs approach, creating new penalties, gutting equity measures and redirecting money from social equity programs towards law enforcement. She said that it was “literally drug war 2.0”. “Ohio legislators are hoping to distract people with conversations about home grows and the ability to purchase adult-use marijuana sooner, while they gut social justice — a key tenet in the voter initiative. Ohioans deserve better.”
During the public testimony Tuesday, one of the main issues raised was the Senate’s original proposal to ban the possession and use cannabis not purchased from licensed state retailers. The advocates opposed the restriction on legalization, but they also noted that the law was written in a way to prevent retailers from starting sales for another year. There was also no requirement for the regulators to grant retailer licenses before a specific date. This could have extended the legalization process indefinitely.
The bill was revised, but the language still allows only for the possession of marijuana purchased from retailers or grown at home. The law would not allow people to buy marijuana from another state, and then possess it legally in Ohio. This loophole, activists fear, will be exploited by the police as a pretext for continuing prosecutions.
The revised measure, however, would allow existing medical cannabis dispensaries in the United States to begin serving adult-use customers within 90 days after enactment. This is a significant improvement over Issue 2’s provisions, which allowed for nine months.
The amended Senate bill also includes other changes, including the elimination of anti-discrimination clauses relating to cannabis consumer rights and eligibility for transplants.
The excise tax on marijuana would increase to 15 percent from the 10 percent set forth in the initiating statute. Local governments could also levy a tax up to 3 percent. The original amendment package included a proposed tax of 15 percent on cultivators. This was dropped.
The law calls for the expungement of $15 million from marijuana tax revenues. The remaining revenue will go towards law enforcement training at the Department of Public Safety (16%), an Attorney General’s Office law enforcement training fund (14%), a drug law enforcement fund (5%) and a poison control fund (2%) as well as substance abuse treatment (9%) and suicide hotline services (9%) and jail construction and renovation (28%).
The bill also reduces the THC limit on extracts for adult use to 50%, instead of 90 percent as per Issue 2. The bill would also reduce canopy limits for cultivation facilities. This, according to stakeholders, could lead to a shortage of marijuana on the market.
Karen O’Keefe is the director of state policy at Marijuana Policy Project. She told Marijuana Moment that “thousands of outraged citizens convinced the Senate to backtrack on its proposed gutting home cultivation, and to add two positive provisions to HB86–limited erasure and earlier sales.” “But the Senate’s gut-and replace of Issue 2 still increases criminalization, raises taxes, caps potency and makes the sale flower impossible. It also eliminates social equality and takes away protections for organ transplants and benefits.
The cannabis language was attached as an attachment to a noncontroversial measure passed by the House on alcohol regulations. It only requires a vote of concurrence in the House.
The House Finance Committee took up this legislation during a second hearing on Thursday, which included advocates, business stakeholders and health officials. The House Finance Committee took up this legislation during a second Hearing held on Thursday, which included advocates, business stakeholder, health officials, and others.
The bill would keep home-grown marijuana, but would also add residency requirements to where plants could be grown. This would prevent “multiple individuals from aggregating their own home-grown plants in a single place, creating a unofficial cultivation facility,” as the sponsor stated in written testimony.
The law would also prohibit the sharing of marijuana among adults, even if it was home-grown. Callender says that the legislation would also add restrictions to advertising and marketing, which would bring marijuana in line with alcohol and tobacco laws.
The House bill would also impose a tax of 10 percent on the gross receipts of marijuana cultivators. The revenue from the cultivator’s tax would be used to create and renovate jails (36%), county sheriffs for areas where at least one cultivator is located (36%), law enforcement training (23%), and a crime victim assistance fund (5%)
The 36 percent of sales tax revenue that Issue 2 allocated for social equity programs will instead be distributed to counties to fund equity grants, a job placement programme, and “anything else that involves community engagement or economic development.”
The remaining 36 percent will go to local governments that have cannabis shops. Another 12.5% would support the 988 crisis and suicide lifeline.
House Speaker Jason Stephens, who has insisted that lawmakers should take more time to consider amendments to a statute that was initiated, has not weighed in with his opinion on Callender’s proposal. He did say that “we will be having discussions about that.”
He said, “There are many different ideas about this and we will continue to discuss it.”
Some Democratic lawmakers have said they are open to revisions such as allocating certain cannabis tax revenues towards K-12 education. However, supporters of the legalization initiative that was approved by the majority of voters do not want legislators to undermine the will that the majority of voters expressed.
Ohio Rep. Juanita Brent, (D), recently stressed that those who have been criminalized for marijuana, and those with industry expertise should also be involved in efforts to amend the voter-approved legalization laws of the state. She argued that it shouldn’t just be up to the “anti-cannabis’ legislators to change the statute.
Rep. Gary Click filed legislation last Thursday that would permit individual municipalities to ban the use of and home cultivation cannabis within their jurisdictions. It would also revise distribution of state marijuana tax revenues by, for instance, reducing funding allocated to social equality and jobs programs, and redirecting them instead to law enforcement training.
Rep. Cindy Abrams, (R), also introduced a Bill last month to revise marijuana law. 40 million dollars in cannabis tax money would be used annually for law enforcement training.
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The Ohio Department of Commerce published a FAQ guide to inform residents about the new law, including the timeline for its implementation. Regulators have repeatedly stated that policies could change depending on the actions of the legislature.
The prohibitionist organizations who campaigned against Issue 2 are now determined to undermine the newly passed law. Some have even described plans to pressurize the legislature into repealing legalization completely before it is implemented.
In September, several Ohio legislators said that they did not believe the legislature would repeal the legalization law passed by voters. The Senate President confirmed that repeal was not on the agenda for the next year.
The issue was only decided by the voters after the lawmakers refused to use the opportunity of passing their own reform during the ballot qualification procedure. The legislature had months to pass a legalization they could have tailored to address any outstanding concerns. However, the legislature deferred this decision to the voters.
The GOP-controlled Senate, which was responsible for the early voting that began in October, passed a Resolution encouraging residents to reject Measure.
Rep. Dave Joyce, the co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus said in September he’d vote in favor of this initiative in November. He urged “all Ohio citizens to take part and have their voices heard in this important issue.”
Sherrod Brown, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (D-OH), said that he voted for the ballot initiative in late October. He called it a hard decision but one that he made because he believed that the reform would improve “safety” among consumers.
Vivek RAMASWAMY, a Republican presidential candidate for 2024, has said that he voted against the ballot initiative to legalize cannabis in Ohio, because he is concerned that the federal government may “weaponize criminalization” against people who engage in state-legal marijuana activities under the “fake pretense” they are protected from federal prosecution.
Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (DNY) said that Ohio’s decision to legalize cannabis at the ballot was just one of many recent examples of Americans rejecting “MAGA extremeism,”. He added that he is committed to working on a bipartisan level “to continue moving forward on bipartisan marijuana legislation as soon we can.”
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus told Marijuana Moment that “the Ohio vote was a big exclamation mark on the things we have been talking about.”
We’ve been saying this for years, that the issue is gaining momentum and is inclusive. He said that it was similar to the success of the [Ohio] abortion rights issue, except this was more pronounced. “We received more votes than abortion.” “We get more votes than anyone on the ballot.”
The White House said separately that “nothing has been changed” with President Joe Biden’s stance on cannabis. They declined to state if they supported Ohio’s decision to legalize marijuana or if they were in favor of further reforms to federal cannabis laws.
According to preliminary results of county elections, while Ohio voters approved the statewide legalization of marijuana, activists scored a number of small victories to criminalize higher amounts of cannabis in 3 Ohio cities.
Cleveland updates pre-employment drug testing policies for most city workers as Ohio marijuana legalization takes effect
Photo by Philip Steffan.
The article Ohio Senate Marijuana bill keeps criminalization and undermines equity, despite Expungements and Home Grow Advocates first appeared on Marijuana Moment.
