COLUMBUS, Ohio — A new push has begun to place a full marijuana legalization initiative on the Ohio ballot, with backers now targeting the November 2022 election, according to state disclosure forms.
A group calling itself the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has launched a website – justlikealcohol.com – and has many of the same backers as a similarly named effort in March 2020 that failed when the coronavirus pandemic entered the state. Campaigners couldn’t get signatures because people stayed at home and away from others, said Tom Haren, a Cleveland attorney who was involved in the last effort.
The Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol has filed disclosure forms with the Ohio Secretary of State, a requirement of any campaign that pays people to circulate petitions for a statewide ballot issue. On Tuesday it submitted to Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s office 1,000 signatures to start the process again to get on the ballot.
The coalition plans to start circulating for what’s called a statewide initiative, a mechanism through which citizens can put a proposed law change before the state legislature. Lawmakers then could decide to pass the law. A similar maneuver in 2016 pressured state lawmakers into legalizing medical marijuana, leading to the program that launched in 2018. The current campaign could be an attempt to force the legislature’s hand once again.
But if the legislature fails to act, or passes a modified version of the law, backers then could seek to take the original proposal for a statewide vote. The process of presenting the the law to the legislature, and then to send it to voters if necessary, is a costly one, and involves collecting hundreds of thousands of signatures from across the state.
Haren declined to say who is funding the campaign, but said it was marijuana-related businesses. The group will be required to disclose its donors in October, under a state campaign-finance deadline.
What would the initiative do?
Ohioans age 21 and older would be allowed to purchase, possess and grow marijuana at home. Existing Ohio medical marijuana dispensaries could expand their businesses to sell to adults 21 and older, and new marijuana businesses could be added to accommodate recreational demand.
“First of all, and most importantly, it ends the marijuana prohibition in Ohio,” Haren said. “It ends the failed drug war.”
Among other provisions:
-The initiative would create the Division of Cannabis Control within the Ohio Department of Commerce to regulate adult use and issue licensees to current medical marijuana businesses and new ones.
-Adults would be allowed to grow up to six marijuana plants at home, with no more than 12 plants in the household.
-Marijuana purchasers would be taxed 10% at the point of sale for each transaction. Haren estimates recreational marijuana revenues could generate $400 million a year in new revenue. He bases that on a 2015 study by Ohio State University’s Drug Enforcement and Policy Center, which studied Colorado recreational sales.
-Tax revenues would be divided among a number of entities: 36% to a fund for cannabis social equity and jobs; 36% for communities with marijuana businesses; 25% to the state’s substance abuse and addiction fund; and 3% to the Division of Cannabis Control to pay for regulation.
-As with the medical marijuana law, the initiative has a social equity program designed to allow people from all backgrounds to own and work at marijuana businesses. It also aims to make whole communities that have been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs, Haren said. But it’s different from the social equity program in the medical marijuana program, since judges across the state have tossed it out as unconstitutional. The initiative’s program would let people become certified as a social equity applicant under the Ohio Department of Development to potentially win marijuana business licenses. They would be eligible for certification based on gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and whether the business owners, their spouses or children have been arrested or convicted of a marijuana-related offense. Among the taxes that go to the cannabis social equity and jobs fund is a requirement for a direct investment in communities disproportionately affected by the drug war.
Campaign details
The group said in state disclosure filings it’s hired two prominent Columbus firms that work on issue campaigns: the Democratic-aligned JVA Campaigns and Republican-aligned Battleground Strategies. Also part of the effort is Advanced Micro Targeting Inc., a Texas-based company that is a nationally prominent signature gathering firm for statewide petition drives.
The involvement of all three firms suggests the effort is well-funded, although passing a statewide ballot issue can cost tens of millions of dollars, and the signature gathering effort is in its earliest stages.
If the group is successful at getting on the November 2022 ballot, it would enliven what’s already going to be a high-profile statewide election. It would appear alongside Ohio’s governor’s race, in which Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is seeking to stand for re-election, as well as a hotly contested U.S. Senate race for a seat vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
Ohio has been passed over for serious full legalization efforts recently because the state’s large population — split among a half-dozen media markets — makes it more expensive to run ads here compared to other states. Meanwhile, other states have moved toward full legalization, including neighboring Michigan, where voters approved a statewide legalization measure in 2018.
Still, running a statewide issue campaign is of interest to advocates here, as well as to state political consultants who make their money running ballot issues, and to business interests that might fund a campaign while designing the law to give themselves a leg up.
Ohio’s last marijuana legalization effort was in 2020. That campaign fizzled out after Attorney General Dave Yost rejected its first batch of signatures in March 2020, during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The group had been targeting the November 2020 election. Ohio voters in 2015 overwhelmingly rejected a legalization measure that would have given monopoly power to a handful of campaign backers. The possibility of a renewed medical marijuana legalization effort, led by Lynaugh, prompted the state to create its medical marijuana program.
Ohio law lays out a complex process that backers of state issue campaigns must follow to place law changes before voters, ultimately requiring backers to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures. Groups have two options: an initiative petition, which puts a law change on the ballot but allows the legislature to intervene, or a constitutional amendment, which includes more regulatory hurdles and is also much harder to change after the fact.
The new marijuana effort is targeting an initiative petition. For the first step, the group must gather signatures from 1,000 registered voters, submitting proposed ballot language to Yost’s office. If Yost approves the language, it then goes to the Ohio Ballot Board, which decides whether to give the green light for the larger signature gathering effort to begin.
The initiative petition first goes to the state legislature, if backers can gather 132,887 valid signatures, a number based off the turnout for the 2018 election for governor, from voters in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties. If the legislature fails to act on the law, or passes it in an amended form, issue backers then could collect another 132,887 signatures to place the law change on the statewide ballot for approval by voters.
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