While public health and safety organizations express concerns about Issue 2, a proposal before voters to legalize recreational marijuana in Ohio, advocates say current laws simply criminalizing cannabis aren’t working and the state would be better served regulating it instead.
There is no official “Vote No” organization on the measure. But opposition has mounted over recent months from the Ohio Senate, the Republican Party of Ohio, the state police union, the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, each of the state’s children’s hospitals, local boards of mental health and recovery and more.
“For me, knowing that we’re still in the opioid epidemic, that we have suicide crisis nationwide and in the state of Ohio, the idea of adding a recreational use of a substance that does pose significant risks to people…is what we’re most worried about,” said Dr. Greta Mayer, CEO of the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Clark-Greene-Madison Counties.
There is a “Vote Yes” campaign, called the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. They gathered petitions to put the initiated statute on the November ballot.
“Prohibition has not stopped people from using marijuana, so do we want people to keep buying marijuana from sources that aren’t regulated, aren’t tested, that aren’t taxed — or do we want to regulate the market to ensure products are safe, so that they know where they’re coming from, that we can guarantee that it’s staying out of the hands of kids and that it’s generating new tax revenue?” said campaign spokesperson Tom Haren.
If approved by voters, Issue 2 would:
– Take the state’s existing medical marijuana framework and expand it by offering current licensed cultivators and dispensaries additional licenses while also extending licenses to entirely new applicants.
– Allow adults age 21 or older to purchase marijuana from licensed dispensaries. Ohioans aged 21 years or older could also grow and cultivate six marijuana plants at a time, no license required, with a limit of 12 per household. Home grown marijuana couldn’t be sold under the proposal.
– Prohibit advertising to minors and mandate setbacks to keep recreational dispensaries away from schools.
– Tax each purchase at 10%. That money would be split 3% to cover regulatory efforts; 25% toward a substance abuse and addiction services fund; 36% toward a fund to create loans, grants and technical assistance to minority or disadvantaged business owners in the industry; 36% toward revenue for local governments where recreational businesses exist.
Campaign finance forms show the campaign backing Issue 2 is heavily financially backed by individuals and entities likely to benefit from selling legalized marijuana.
Other Issue 2 supporters include the Montgomery County Democratic Party, though the state party declined to take a position and instead left it up to individual counties.
Also in support was a majority of respondents in a recent Baldwin Wallace University poll. The poll of 850 people found 57.4% of respondents said they would vote for Issue 2, 35.1% said they would vote against it an 7.5% were undecided.
What you told us
A substantial majority of 390 respondents to an unofficial online survey of readers of the Dayton Daily News, Journal-News and Springfield News-Sun said they were in favor of Issue 2. The news organizations followed up with several respondents in interviews.
“I don’t believe in laws that try to protect people from themselves or tell people what they can or cannot do with their own body,” said Nathaniel Mastick, a nurse in Clark County. He didn’t deny that marijuana could be addictive, but reasoned that if alcohol is legal, then marijuana should be too, given that its effects on health are “pretty benign” in comparison.
“I’ve worked at a hospital for 10 years, and we’ve never had anybody in marijuana withdrawal,” he said. “But, we’ve definitely had a lot of people in alcohol withdrawal and a lot of end-stage organ failure, especially liver, as a result of alcohol — a lot of nasty stuff that nobody should ever want to go through or see. I’ve never seen that with marijuana.”
For other readers, like John Paul of Montgomery County, the argument that marijuana is comparable to alcohol, or even slightly better, doesn’t lead him to conclude that both should be legal.
“I (do) think that it’s similar to alcohol: It’s not good for your health, it’s not good for people, it would be difficult to monitor people driving under the influence,” Paul said. “…The abuses of alcohol far outweigh the qualities of alcohol, so I would say that you would expect a similar experience with marijuana — it would be abused and the effects would be negative on society.”
Ultimately, Paul concluded that he doesn’t “see a need for legalizing a drug that’s primary purpose is to make you high.”
In general, survey respondents opposed to Issue 2 expressed concern about people driving under the influence, the smell of it being everywhere, and fears it will exacerbate Ohio’s drug problems.
Themes among survey respondents supporting Issue 2 include the belief that marijuana has medicinal benefits, it’s safer than alcohol, the potential for tax revenue, and belief that it should be a personal choice.
Jason McNeal, a Clark County voter who describes his political leanings as a mix of libertarian and conservative, characterized such laws as “government intrusion.”
“I think people should just be able to have the freedom to do what they want to do to their own bodies, I guess,” McNeal said. “Smoking pot is a victimless crime that people get punished for and I don’t agree with it.”
Law enforcement, NAACP
The Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, the state’s police union, came out against Issue 2 with a video from union President Gary Wolske, who suggested a recreational marijuana program could increase the level of property and violent crime in Ohio, which he said would be harder to mitigate as a police force given a shortage of officers.
“People think that legalizing marijuana is a panacea to fix all the problems. It’s not. Street level drug dealers aren’t going away,” Wolske said. He argued that increased competition could raise tension among illegal dealers.
Derrick Foward, president of the Dayton Unit of the NAACP, said his branch is following the Ohio Chapter’s lead in endorsing Issue 2, which he called a “tough issue.”
Foward said the NAACP hopes that legalizing recreational marijuana will help limit exposure to fentanyl, curb youth drug use and address “the over-policing and over-incarceration of Black, brown and poor Ohioans under the excuse of the drug war.”
Public health/addiction
Health organizations like Dayton Children’s Hospital and the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Clark-Greene-Madison Counties, which have both strongly opposed Issue 2, are primarily concerned about the unintentional, and sometimes unknown, consequences to residents’ health if Ohio were to adopt a recreational marijuana program.
Dr. Greta Mayer, CEO of the Mental Health & Recovery Board of Clark-Greene-Madison Counties, said she’s concerned about the messaging a legal recreational marijuana program might send to younger Ohioans.
“My fear is that people don’t understand that marijuana does carry risks with it and that there may be not the knowledge that it does carry those risks, especially for young people who may interpret this result as that it’s safe to use because Ohio says it’s okay and the law reads that way,” Mayer said.
Mayer said the board’s opposition is based in concerns with marijuana’s potential to be a gateway drug; the increasingly-high THC concentration in modern strains of marijuana; links to suicidal thoughts in young adults; a propensity for workplace accidents among marijuana users; and the ability for smokers to develop cannabis use disorder.
Cannabis advocate, Issue 2 opponent
In Butler County, Jeff Butterfield, a cannabis advocate and owner of a Fairfield CBD shop called ButterBuds CannaCo., said he’ll be voting against Issue 2 after careful consideration.
For him, cannabis has a variety of therapeutic attributes that, if used correctly, can help a variety of ailments. He fears recreational marijuana will undermine those focused on promoting the health benefits.
Butterfield fears dispensaries’ incentives would be more focused on bulk profit than ensuring that their customers ingest marijuana in a healthy way. He likened the potential misuse of the would-be marijuana market to how many Ohioans have long been able to misuse alcohol due to its availability.
“So many people — even my own customers, man — for years have said ‘I’m medicating for depression, I’m self medicating for anxiety, I’m self medicating because my back hurts, with alcohol,’” Butterfield said. “How well is that working out for society?”
