Ohio Became Completely Recreational Cannabis Legalization

In a stunning reversal, Ohio’s GOP-controlled Senate passed a revised bill that in many ways would expand the voter-approved marijuana legalization law that goes into effect on Thursday by allowing adults to start buying cannabis from existing medical dispensaries in as soon as 90 days, maintaining home cultivation rights and providing for automatic expungements of prior convictions, among other changes.

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Just days after the Senate General Government Committee advanced legislation to fundamentally undo key provisions of the cannabis initiative voters passed at the ballot last month—proposing to eliminate the home grow option and delaying legalization for at least one year until adult-use retailers started sales. Which made Ohio recently became the 24th state in the US to legalize recreational cannabis. When the law goes into effect, a majority of Americans will be living in a jurisdiction where marijuana use is legal. According to the Financial Times, the growing popularity of pot is even affecting politics. Democrats see it as vote-getter, like abortion; Republicans are becoming less adverse to it.

The ballot measure, dubbed Issue 2, passed on the Nov. 7 election with 57% of the vote and it set to become law this Thursday, making Ohio the 24th state to legalize marijuana for adult recreational use. But as a citizen-initiated statute, the Legislature is free to make tweaks on it, of which they’re attempting plenty.

“The goal of this committee is to provide the people’s wishes with a safe product,” Sen. Michael Rulli, a Columbiana County Republican, said during a meeting of the Senate General Government Committee, where the changes were tacked onto an unrelated alcohol regulation bill.

Senate legislation would also reduce the amount of recreational marijuana someone can legally possess at a time, as well as lower the legal THC levels for marijuana plants, from the statute’s original 90 percent to 50 percent, and the levels for extracts, from the original 35 percent to 25 percent. While the legislation would maintain adults’ right to grow up to six plants per person, though it would cap the household limit at six plants rather than 12 as set by the initiated statute.

GOP senators also proposed several efforts to protect children from consuming or being exposed to marijuana use — a priority for the governor. Under the new measure, marijuana products would have to be sold in child-safe packaging and could not resemble any animals, fruit or fictional characters such as those from cartoons.

Advertisers would also be banned from utilizing any media or pop culture figures whose target audience is children to sell marijuana products, and dispensaries could not exist within 500 feet (152 meters) of a school, church, public library or public park.

Data and Picture origin at pbs.org, marijuanamoment, Axios