A new law that’s likely to pass at the Statehouse next week would establish a series of minor criminal penalties for people who improperly transport or possess marijuana in Ohio, while rolling back legal protections for users in venues like child custody or professional licensing disputes.
For that reason, NORML, the oldest marijuana advocacy organization in the U.S., is leading a quixotic effort to ask the Ohio Senate to reject Senate Bill 56 before a final vote next week.
With the Senate’s approval, the bill would go to Gov. Mike DeWine (R) for a signature or veto.
The marijuana changes come within a larger package that also imposes a comprehensive, new regulatory system on intoxicating hemp, a product that’s functionally similar to legal marijuana but sold without the age restrictions, taxes or quality controls. DeWine, a Republican who opposed relaxing Ohio’s marijuana laws, has made a public cause of the intoxicating hemp issue for more than a year now.
But perhaps out of a political compromise, marijuana users have found themselves caught in the crosshairs within the hemp crackdown, according to Morgan Fox, NORML’s political director.
“A lot of these things are completely nonsensical,” he said in an interview. “This is recriminalizing a lot of behavior that is relatively innocuous and has been legal for some time.”
House and Senate lawmakers negotiated a final version of the legislation in a conference committee, which means the bill can no longer be changed. The House passed it last month, with a late-night 52-34 vote, where a handful of Republicans joined Democrats in opposition.
Committee members described the final version as a compromise between a list of scrambled voting blocs: Democrats who don’t want new criminal penalties for run-of-the-mill users, libertarian-minded Republicans protective of the right to grow one’s own marijuana, religious conservatives who disapprove expanding the legal use of intoxicants, local governments who want their tax money, a governor seeking a crackdown on the gas station hemp retailers, and both the hemp and marijuana industries seeking market advantage. (All told, 153 lobbyists registered to work on the bill as of August, state records show.)
In 2023, Ohio voters passed Issue 2 by a 57 percent to 43 percent vote, allowing for adults to lawfully use, buy, sell and possess cannabis. Those rights remain broadly intact under the bill.
However, SB 56 imposes legal penalties for things like possessing marijuana in anything but its original container or buying legal marijuana in Michigan where it tends to be much cheaper.
What follows is a closer look at some of those rules.
Hellbound and Down 