Ohio GOP Leaders Claim Bill To Roll Back Marijuana Legalization Law Doesn’t Disrespect Voters

Ohio’s Senate president is pushing again towards criticism of a bill that would scale back parts of a voter-approved marijuana legalization law, claiming that the laws doesn’t disrespect the desire of the voters and would have little influence on merchandise available in shops.

“My definitive message is: If you want to go purchase marijuana products from a licensed dispensary, that is going to be unchanged by Senate Bill 56,” Senate President Rob McColley (R) stated on a podcast posted on Friday. “The only difference you’ll notice is the packaging may not look as appealing to children, but you’ll still be able to buy the same products.”

McColley was talking on a The President’s Podcast, produced and printed by Ohio Senate Republicans. He and host John Fortney, the communications director for the Senate GOP caucus, spent the primary half of the podcast defending SB 56, which might amend the cannabis law passed by voters in November 2023.

Among different modifications, the invoice would halve the variety of crops that adults may develop, add new felony penalties round hashish conduct and take away choose social fairness provisions within the regulation.

The Senate approved the proposal on a 23–9 vote last week.

Critics, similar to Sen. Bill DeMora (D), who spoke towards the measures on the Senate ground, contend that the plan “goes against the will of the voters and will kill the adult industry in Ohio.”

Fortney started the podcast by acknowledging “a lot of controversy around Senate Bill 56,” asserting that “all it did was preserve access to what the voters approved in November of 2023, the initiated marijuana statute, and put some safety and security parameters around it for—of all things, Mr. President—children.”

“The far left, the Democrat narrative, the narrative of the legacy media, has been, ‘Republicans are trying to take away what the voters approved,’ which is patently false,” Fortney continued. “What a lie.”

“Absolutely,” McColley replied, warning that newspaper readers and TV information viewers “are going to hear an awful lot of hyperbole” and falsehoods concerning the proposal.

Fortney, in a separate weblog submit concerning the podcast, stated the proposal “created a media tantrum the size of a tidal wave, all to protect pot.”

“Coverage this week from Ohio’s legacy media which hasn’t learned anything from the November election seems to think it is wise to leave children and families unprotected from secondhand smoke,” he wrote.

While McColley stated initially on the podcast that the “only” distinction in merchandise obtainable beneath SB 56 could be packaging, he later famous that the invoice would additionally decrease THC efficiency in marijuana flower and concentrates and cap per-package THC quantities in edible merchandise.

In its present type, it could additionally stop folks with felony convictions from acquiring a marijuana license and restore the flexibility of stage two cultivators to increase their operations to fifteen,000 sq. toes.

The laws, from Sen. Steve Huffman (R), would additionally roll again the voter-approved homegrow provision, decreasing the variety of crops that might be grown at a residence from 12 down to 6.

“That’s still a gigantic amount of produce or product or buds that you would have available,” Fortney stated on the podcast.

Replied McColley: “Many of these marijuana plants can grow enough marijuana for up to 300 joints in a year through their harvest cycles. So you do the math—and this is supposed to be for personal use—but yeah, even just 12 plants, that’s 3,600 joints a year.”

Under present regulation, felony penalties for dwelling cultivation don’t kick in till a family grows 24 crops, the Senate president famous, including, “That’s 7,200 joints a year.”

“I smoke a lot of cigars, I assured you,” Fortney responded, “but I don’t smoke 7,000 cigars.”

“It stands to reason that if you are growing that much marijuana, you are likely transferring it to somebody else for profit or otherwise, which is illegal,” McColley argued. “Lowering it to a six-plant-per-household threshold is still plenty of marijuana for people to consumer for their own personal use.”

Reform advocates oppose the laws. In addition to it limiting permissible exercise, they argue that it could recriminalize the sharing of hashish between adults, smoking or vaping in somebody’s personal again yard and transporting unopened edibles in a automobile.

On the podcast, McColley emphasised the invoice’s effort to restrict smoking marijuana in public.

“If you want to go to a park and you want to consume a joint, for example, around children, that’s going to be prohibited,” he stated. “I think most people would agree [that] if if you’re taking your children to a ball game, or you’re going to dinner with your your elderly parents, you don’t really want to walk through a cloud of smoke.”

He additionally downplayed the chance of felony fees from public consumption.

“The likelihood of anybody really running into some serious penalties for this are actually slim to none,” he stated, “because a minor misdemeanor, you can’t be jailed for it, there’s simply a fine.”

“What’s more likely to happen is that, if you see people consuming those products— again, only smoking in public—what you would likely see is somebody simply go up to them and say, ‘You can’t do that here; you got to do it somewhere else.’”

SB 56 would remove non-discrimination protections to make sure hashish shoppers aren’t denied little one custody, entry to medical care and public advantages.

DeMora stated on the Senate ground that “a top priority of any legislation dealing with marijuana should be to preserve the will of the people,” including that “the people made their will known” once they permitted Issue 2.

“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,” the Democratic senator stated. “This bill does none of those things. In fact, it makes all those provisions worse.”

Sen. Louis Blessing (R) voiced help for the proposal, however stated he felt the truth that the legislature was having this debate about revising the regulation demonstrates why lawmakers ought to’ve seen the writing on the wall and moved to enact legalization themselves, earlier than it grew to become a poll situation.

In its preliminary type, the invoice would have raised the state’s excise tax on marijuana merchandise from 10 % to fifteen % and likewise modified how taxes are redistributed to native governments. But these tax provisions had been eliminated on the earlier listening to in mild of separate plans to regulate the tax price in broader price range laws.

While the elevated excise tax price was faraway from the newest model of SB 56, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has separately indicated plans to double the double the current tax rate by way of the price range course of, elevating it to twenty %.

The invoice as handed by the Senate additionally stipulates that the state Division of Cannabis Control (DCC) would now not be required to ascertain guidelines permitting for marijuana deliveries and on-line purchases.

At one level within the podcast, Fortney requested McColley about why lawmakers wouldn’t merely let regulators on the state’s present Department of Cannabis Control write laws across the adult-use market.

The Senate president stated that’d be “an abdication” of the legislature’s obligation and authority.

“The regulators, albeit well intentioned in many cases, were not elected by the people to write law,” he stated. “They’re staff of the state. Nobody elected them to be there.

“If we advocate that authority to the executive branch, not only we are we advocating our own legislative authority, but we’re also failing to do the jobs that the people elected us to come down here to do.”

In common, nevertheless, he stated he feels state regulators are “doing a good job.”

“There’s a lot that’s been thrown at them in a short amount of time, but I think by and large, they’re doing as best job that we could expect of them,” McColley stated.

Certain Democrats have to this point indicated a willingness to finesse the hashish regulation, however they’ve stated Huffman’s proposed modifications to provisions round points similar to dwelling cultivation are a bridge too far.

Sen. Casey Weinstein (D), for instance, has stated there’s “definitely bipartisan support for protections in marketing to keep kids safe and sensible limitations on where you can use cannabis,” however not for undermining basic parts of what voters permitted.

Ahead of final week’s Senate ground listening to, the ACLU of Ohio put out a name to motion, urging folks to contact their representatives and categorical opposition to the proposed modifications to that present regulation.

The invoice’s development comes as Ohio’s GOP House speaker seems to have changed his tune on the state’s marijuana law considerably, strolling again his beforehand acknowledged plan to undermine provisions of the voter-approved initiative similar to dwelling cultivation rights.

Conflicts between Senate and House Republican management close to the tip of the final session performed a key position in stalling modification proposals. It’s unclear if the chambers will be capable of attain consensus this spherical, particularly because the market continues to evolve and shoppers undertake to the regulation.

House Speaker Matt Huffman (R), who’s the cousin of SB 56’s sponsor and beforehand served as Senate president, stated that whereas he continues to oppose the reform measure voters handed, he doesn’t consider anybody within the legislature “realistically is suggesting that we’re going to repeal the legalization of marijuana.”

“I’m not for it. I wasn’t for the casinos coming to Ohio, either. But there’s lots of stuff that’s part of the Constitution and the law that are there that I don’t like,” he stated.

To that finish, the speaker indicated he’s now not curious about pursuing plans to broadly undermine the hashish regulation, despite having backed legislation as a Senate leader last session that may have decreased allowable THC ranges in state-legal hashish merchandise, lowered the variety of crops that adults may develop at dwelling and elevated prices for shoppers at dispensaries.

Initially, changes backed by Matt Huffman final 12 months would have eliminated home cultivation rights entirely for Ohio adults and criminalized all hashish obtained wherever aside from a state-licensed retailer.

While some Democratic lawmakers have beforehand indicated that they could be amenable to sure revisions, similar to placing sure hashish tax income towards Okay-12 training, different supporters of the voter-passed legalization initiative are firmly towards letting legislators undermine the desire of the bulk that permitted it.

Meanwhile, as 2024 got here to a detailed with the brand new marijuana legalization regulation in impact, Ohio officers introduced the state saw adult-use cannabis sales exceed $242 million.

As the 2025 session will get underway, lawmakers are additionally anticipated to contemplate key modifications to the state’s hemp legal guidelines. In November, legislators took testimony on a proposal that may ban intoxicating hemp merchandise within the state. Steve Huffman, the sponsor of the marijuana revision invoice, launched that proposal after the governor known as on lawmakers to regulate or ban delta-8 THC products.

Separately, regardless of legalization of adult-use hashish in Ohio, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’s (VA) Cincinnati well being middle issued a reminder final summer time that government doctors are still prohibited from recommending medical cannabis to veterans—no less than so long as it stays a Schedule I managed substance beneath federal regulation.

Medical Marijuana Is A ‘Safe And Effective Treatment’ For Pain And Sleep Issues In Older People, Study Shows