As early voting kicked off in Ohio on Wednesday, the state Senate passed a GOP-led resolution urging voters to reject a marijuana legalization measure that’s on the ballot.
Introduced by Sens. Mark Romanchuk (R) and Terry Johnson (R), and cosponsored by 14 other Senate Republicans, SR 216 lists a parade of horribles that lawmakers say would befall the state if the cannabis ballot initiative known as Issue 2 becomes law.
“The proposed statute authored by the commercial marijuana industry,” it says, “does not serve the best interests of the people of Ohio, will bring unacceptable threats and risks to the health of all Ohioans, especially children, will create dangers in the workplace and unacceptable challenges and costs to employers, will make Ohio’s roads more dangerous, will impose significant new, unfunded costs to Ohio’s public social services, and serves only to advance the financial interests of the commercial marijuana industry and its investors.”
Nearly three in five state voters said they support adult-use legalization in a poll commissioned by the campaign and published late last month. That’s consistent with the results of other recent independent surveys.
The Senate’s dire warnings, which do not cite any supporting data, represent a selective reading of the available evidence around marijuana legalization.
The resolution asserts, for example, that marijuana “is a ‘gateway’ drug, and research shows that four out of ten regular marijuana users go on to experiment with other drugs,” claiming—apparently inaccurately—that drug overdoses “have been the leading cause of injury and death in Ohio” since 2007. It says that “33,000 Ohioans have died of drug overdoses between 2011 and 2020.”
According to Ohio’s Department of Health, however, COVID-19 has so far killed more than 42,000 people in the state.
Hellbound and Down 