Tag: ohio

Ohio’s Republican governor vetoes trans care restriction and sports ban

Ohio’s governor vetoed a bill Friday that would have restricted both transition-related care for minors and transgender girls’ participation on school sports teams.

Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto makes him one of only two Republican governors to veto a restriction on gender-affirming care, alongside Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson in 2021, and one of only three Republican governors to veto a trans athlete bill after Utah Gov. Spencer Cox and Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb last year.

In a press conference on Friday following his veto, DeWine said the “gut-wrenching” decision about whether a minor should have access to gender-affirming care “should not be made by the government, should not be made by the state of Ohio,” rather it should be made by the child’s parents and doctors.

Prior to vetoing the bill, DeWine told The Associated Press that he visited three Ohio children’s hospitals to learn more about transition-related care and spoke to families who were both helped and harmed by it. 

“We’re dealing with children who are going through a challenging time, families that are going through a challenging time,” he said. “I want, the best I can, to get it right.”

The Ohio General Assembly, which is controlled by a Republican supermajority, can override the governor’s veto with a three-fifths majority vote.

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Ohio GOP Governor Pushes Lawmakers To Fix ‘Ridiculous’ Marijuana Sales Delay And Send Tax Revenue To Police

The governor of Ohio is pushing lawmakers to take action as soon as possible to address the “ridiculous situation” the state has found itself in, where marijuana is now legal to possess and use but without any place for consumers to purchase regulated products from.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that the Senate passed a “good bill” to make various changes to the legalization law that voters approved at the ballot last month, but the House didn’t act before lawmakers adjourned for the year. He said he’s spoken with House Speaker Jason Stephens (R), who assured him that the chamber would work to “fix these problems” when they return.

While DeWine opposed the legalization initiative that voters overwhelmingly approved, he said “what’s important is we go forward,” starting with enacting reforms to provide legal access to cannabis sooner than later. The Senate bill, for example, would allow existing medical marijuana dispensaries to begin sales to adult consumers within 90 days of enactment, rather than licensing retailers in nine months under the current timeline.

“I don’t think anybody who voted for [legalization] thought that we would have a situation like we do today,” the governor said, adding that he doesn’t want Ohio to experience the same issues that New York has faced throughout its protracted legalization rollout, with illicit retailers proliferating.

“The legislature needs to take action now so that we could actually start selling it in Ohio legally and control how it is being sold—and so that the person who’s buying it knows exactly what in fact they’re they’re getting,” DeWine told WSYX in an end-of-year interview that aired on Thursday.

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Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it

Ernie Haynes never imagined that taking care of his three grandsons after his daughter’s drug overdose death would turn him into a felon at the hands of a longtime Ohio prosecutor known to sidestep the rules intended to protect a defendant’s rights in criminal trials.

A week after his daughter died in December 2017, the court granted temporary custody of the children to their biological father, a man Haynes said also struggled with drug addiction. When Haynes refused to give up his grandchildren, Wood County authorities arrested him and charged him with six counts of abduction. The action sparked a five-year legal battle to clear his name.

“We never got to grieve … because immediately we were plunged into this hell,” said Haynes’ wife, Marcella Haynes.

Ernie Haynes, 59, didn’t know it, but the assistant prosecutor who would try his case, Thomas Matuszak, had a track record of repeatedly violating legal standards to sway juries at trials and win convictions, according to court findings. He would do the same in Haynes’ case.

And it wouldn’t be the last.

Matuszak is one of about 100 prosecutors across Ohio who the courts found had violated standards meant to preserve a defendant’s civil rights in criminal trials, an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, NPR and member station WVXU in Cincinnati, and The Ohio Newsroom found. He is one of 13 who did so more than once. Together, these 13 prosecutors accounted for nearly one-third of the 104 cases in the state where courts found that prosecutors acted improperly.

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Ohio House Lawmakers Take Up GOP Bill To Amend Voter-Approved Marijuana Law As Alternative To Senate Overhaul

Ohio House lawmakers held another committee hearing on a bill to revise the state’s newly enacted marijuana legalization law, hearing additional testimony ahead of an expected vote on Wednesday.

After taking public input on the legislation from Rep. Jamie Callender (R) last week, the House Finance Committee met again on Tuesday to hear from additional advocates and stakeholders as Senate Republicans work to advance a separate revision package that’s sparked significant pushback.

The House bill is considered more palatable to reform supporters, as it’d make less sweeping changes to what voters approved on the November ballot—especially compared to the Senate legislation that initially called for the elimination of home cultivation and an indefinite delay on basic legalization provisions. That latter measure was significantly altered amid criticism last week, but it’s still facing sizable opposition.

Senate President Matt Huffman (R) originally aimed to pass the bill under an emergency prior to legalization taking effect last week, but that didn’t happen according to his timeline. House Speaker Jason Stephens (R), meanwhile, has said he doesn’t see the need to rush amending the initiated statute given that sales won’t begin until later in 2024.

The GOP House and Senate leaders have disagreed on certain procedural issues related to amending the marijuana law such as the timeline for enactment, but they’ve both generally expressed support for the idea of making changes such as revising the tax structure, preventing public consumption and deterring impaired driving.

In the House Finance Committee, members took additional public testimony on Tuesday, hearing from interested parties who expressed concern about issues such as the bill’s continued criminalization of sharing marijuana between adults and the redirection of tax revenue away from equity and toward law enforcement.

“My concern is that, through some of the reforms that I’m seeing being introduced in this legislature, we would be moving from puff-puff-pass to puff-puff-police and that is in total contradiction to what Ohio voters voted in support of,” Cat Packer, vice chair of Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition (CRCC) and director of drug markets and legal regulation at the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA), said in testimony to the committee.

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Advocate Thinks ‘Marijuana Bomb’ Will Hit Ohio Because of Legal Weed

An anti-weed advocate believes a “marijuana bomb” will hit Ohio as the state proceeds with legalizing weed. 

Ohio already has legal medical weed but voters recently passed a measure legalizing possession, growing, and sales for anyone over 21. 

Despite the fact that Ohio is following in the footsteps of nearly two dozen other states, Aubree Adams, director of anti-weed organization Every Brain Matters, had some rather creative doomsday predictions about the impact of the new policy. 

“Ohio voters were fooled into thinking marijuana was less harmful than alcohol. It’s not. One swallow of alcohol can’t induce psychotic behaviors, but one swallow of a marijuana edible can. One hit off a potent THC vape can. And two hits from a marijuana bong can,” she said, speaking to a Senate General Government Committee meeting earlier this week. 

“Thankfully, members of this committee are the gatekeepers that can lessen the impacts of this marijuana bomb before it’s detonated on Ohio families.” 

While a marijuana bomb sounds scary—or fun, depending on your stance—Adams’ claims are misleading at best. 

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Ohio Congressman To File Federal Cannabis Legalization Bill

Republican U.S. Representative David Joyce of Ohio will soon introduce a new bill to legalize cannabis at the federal level, according to a report from Forbes published on Wednesday. 

The new legislation is characterized as a “modernized” version of a bill Joyce introduced in 2019 known as the STATES Act. Although the measure has not yet been formally introduced in the House of Representatives, a draft of Joyce’s new bill is titled the STATES 2.0 Act. 

If passed, the legislation would remove cannabis from Schedule l of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). However, cannabis products that are grown or manufactured outside of a state-regulated market would remain illegal under federal law, allowing states that do not want to legalize marijuana a way to maintain prohibition within their jurisdictions.

“States and [Native American] tribes have had enough with the federal government’s half-in-half-out approach that is applied without rhyme or reason,” Joyce, the co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, told Forbes in an interview. “Numerous tribes and over 40 states now, including my own, have made it clear that the federal government needs to support their cannabis laws. I’m hopeful this legislation will do just that.”

Despite the popularity of cannabis legalization, political leaders in many states would prefer to keep recreational marijuana illegal. With provisions that maintain the federal illegality of marijuana produced outside of a regulated market, Joyce’s bill allows states to take the lead on cannabis policy.

“This legislation would make it the federal government’s policy to recognize and legitimize the decisions of each state,” said a spokesperson for the congressman. “If the state decides they want to remain prohibitory, the federal government will provide enforcement, if a state decides they want to legalize, the federal government will provide regulation.”

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Ohio Senate Marijuana Bill Keeps Criminalization And Undermines Equity, Despite Expungements And Home Grow, Advocates Warn

Ohio’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law took effect on Thursday—but as lawmakers continue to push changes, advocates are calling attention to key provisions of a Senate-passed proposal that they say threatens to perpetuate criminalization and undermine social equity even while it walks back other significant alterations that were initially proposed such as a removal home cultivation rights.

At the same time, House lawmakers held a second hearing on Thursday about a separate measure to amend the legalization law.

After weeks of discussing revisions to the initiated statute, Republicans first unveiled legislation this week that would have done away with home grow, hiked marijuana taxes and re-criminalized possession of cannabis that wasn’t obtained from licensed retailers, which couldn’t open for at least one year. Some advocates were tentatively encouraged, therefore, when a significantly revised version with seeming improvements, including the restoration of home grow rights and addition of expungements provisions, was released and quickly advanced through the Senate with near-unanimous support on Wednesday.

But the brief discussion of the bill in committee prior to the full chamber vote—which also came amid House consideration of a separate GOP-led measure—did not adequately reflect the substantive changes that would be made to the law voters passed with 57 percent support, equity advocates say.

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Marijuana Is Now Legal In Ohio As Voter-Approved Law Takes Effect, But Lawmakers Are Considering Some Changes

Ohio’s voter-approved marijuana legalization initiative took effect on Thursday, and despite ongoing wrangling by state lawmakers to modify significant portions of the law, some provisions—including legal use, possession and home cultivation of cannabis—have immediate impacts.

Voters solidly approved the legalization ballot measure, Issue 2, on a 57–42 margin last month. But soon after, Republicans in the state Senate indicated their plans to gut the bill by eliminating home grow, reducing legal possession and allowable THC limits, raising sales tax, criminalizing the use and possession of marijuana obtained outside of a licensed retailer and steering funding away from social equity programs and toward law enforcement. Stakeholders said the overhaul would devastate the market, with ACLU of Ohio calling the measure a “demolition of Issue 2.”

As of Wednesday, however, the GOP-controlled Senate abruptly reversed course, and the full chamber instead approved a revised bill that in some ways would expand the voter-approved law. Among other changes, it would allow all adults 21 and older to buy cannabis from existing medical dispensaries in as soon as 90 days, maintain home cultivation rights and provide for automatic expungements of prior convictions.

The bill now goes to the House, where an alternative measure has been introduced. But regardless of how the proposed changes pan out, some reforms have already taken effect with Issue 2 kicking in on Thursday. Here’s a brief rundown of what’s new and what’s still to come in the months ahead.

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Ohio Senate Committee Approves Bill To Allow Marijuana Sales From Dispensaries ‘Immediately’, Keep Home Grow And Expunge Records

In a stunning reversal, an Ohio GOP-controlled Senate committee has unanimously approved a revised bill that in many ways would expand the voter-approved marijuana legalization law that goes into effect on Thursday— by allowing adults to start buying marijuana from existing medical cannabis dispensaries in as soon as 90 days, maintaining home cultivation rights and providing for automatic expungements of prior marijuana convictions, among other changes.

Just days after the Senate General Government Committee advanced legislation to fundamentally undo key provisions of the cannabis initiative voters passed at the ballot last month—proposing to eliminate the home grow option and delaying legalization for at least one year until adult-use retailers started sales, for example—the panel dramatically walked back the measure and passed it in a unanimous bipartisan voice vote on Wednesday.

It’s now been referred to the Senate Rules and Reference Committee before potentially advancing to the floor as early as Wednesday evening. That said, it is not clear that the House is ready to make any changes on an expedited basis to the legalization measure that’s set to take effect on Thursday.

The overhaul of the measure comes one day after the Senate panel held a hearing and received public testimony on the initial proposal, with many advocates and stakeholders expressing frustration with the seeming undermining of voters’ decision and recommending changes such as freeing up medical cannabis dispensaries to start servicing adult consumers while regulators develop rules to license recreational retailers.

Sen. Rob McColley (R) detailed the latest changes following negotiations during an extensive recess in committee on Wednesday, stating that lawmakers’ focus “needs to be stamping out the black market” and also “protecting the access that the people of Ohioans voted for,” while ensuring that the administrative implementation “runs as efficiently as it possibly can, while protecting opportunities for for Ohioans to engage in this new industry.”

Committee Chairman Michael Rulli (R) said that over “the last three or four days, a lot of the public has reached out to probably every single one of our senators with thousands of emails and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of calls.”

“I think the people have spoken,” he said.

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Ohio State University health course will require students to address ‘whiteness’ and explain how they ‘navigate race’ in their daily lives

The Ohio State University students who have signed up for a health sciences course are required to address their white, heterosexual or able-bodied privileges, documents have revealed.

The course titled ‘Individual Differences in Patient/Client Populations’ is offered through the university’s School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.

Do No Harm, a group of physicians, healthcare professionals, medical students, patients and policymakers who aim to ‘protect healthcare from a radical, divisive, and discriminatory ideology’ obtained course details through a Freedom of Information Act request.

In the documents, reviewed by Fox News, one assignment in the course titled ‘Unpack the Invisible Knapsack’ asked students to complete a series of activities about privilege.

Three options were provided to students as per the document obtained by Do No Harm that allowed students to select from the ‘white privilege knapsack,’ the ‘heterosexual privilege knapsack’ and the ‘able-body privilege knapsack.’

The assignment stems from a 1989 essay titled ‘White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack’ in which anti-racist activist Peggy McIntosh addresses her own experiences of race.

McIntosh’s work, which attempts to prove white privilege exists, is scattered through the course document including statements such as: ‘Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.’

The course has seen some backlash by online critics who believe The Ohio State University is a ‘sick waste of money.’

One critic said: ‘Health sciences program offered at The Ohio State University requires students to take part in an array of discussions about gender and race, including students to address their ‘privileges if they are White’, heterosexual or able-bodied.

‘It’s time to flush out college DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).’

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