With less than a week before Election Day, both sides of the marijuana legalization issue on the fall ballot defended their positions in a sometimes feisty debate in Columbus Wednesday.
Issue 3 is the constitutional amendment that would legalize marijuana by creating 10 official investor-owned growing sites, the possibly of 1100 locally approved retail stores and a system of regulation and taxes.
“The reason we put it in the constitution is we don’t trust the legislature – pure and simple,” said Ian James from ResponsibleOhio, the group pushing Issue 3.
“Why would you trust the legislature when they’ve failed so epically to deal with this issue? And now they’re upset because they can’t get their hands on the money from the issue,” said James.
A broad coalition of more than a hundred health, government and lobbying groups, along with several well-known current and former elected officials, opposes Issue 3.
Democratic Rep. Mike Curtin speaks for Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, which opposes the investor-driven proposal and the fact that it could be in the constitution.
“These guys have formed an amendment to give themselves a monopoly in perpetuity,” Curtin said.
“They wrote the rules. They’re controlling the Marijuana Control Commission, not vice versa.”
Issue 3’s backers say pot is being bought and sold in Ohio right now, by adults as well as kids, so the only way to control marijuana in Ohio is to fully regulate it, both as a medical and a recreational commodity. Ohio would be the first state to do both with one ballot issue.
But opponents say the investors want to sell pot to as many people as possible, and that if Issue 3 passes, it could be available in every neighborhood in the state. And they note if it passes, the investors who are paying for the campaign and who benefit from it will have set the tax rates, and lawmakers won’t be able to change it.
But Chris Stock, the attorney who wrote the amendment for ResponsibleOhio, said the 22.5 percent tax rate was set so legal pot can compete with the black market.
“We’re going to have pricing in real time that’s going to reflect supply and demand and competition,” Stock said.
Curtin countered, saying “If these 10 landowners and their co-investors thought they were buying into a plan that would create true competition, they would not have ponied up $40 million to corner the market on this commodity. It’s that simple.”
And over and over, questions about medical marijuana come up in discussions of Issue 3.
Polls have shown Ohioans overwhelmingly support medical marijuana. And ResponsibleOhio has been talking up the stories of struggling patients and saying that for years, lawmakers have deliberately ignored bills to legalizing medicinal pot.
But Elizabeth Smith with Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies noted a long list of medical professionals oppose Issue 3 on the grounds that marijuana hasn’t been formally approved as a treatment for any condition, and has been shown to cause health problems.
“There shouldn’t be a rush to put this out there as a medicine,” Smith said. “In fact it will do more harm.”
Ian James shot back.
“Oh, my dear God – there’s not been a rush. We’ve waited for 19 years for the legislature to do anything on this issue. So to suggest that we’re rushing is just a complete abdication of fact,” James said.
This debate didn’t deal with the amendment just above Issue 3 – the so-called anti-monopoly proposal, Issue 2, which would prevent economic monopolies from becoming part of the state constitution.
That issue was put on the ballot by state lawmakers, in an apparent attempt to negate the marijuana legalization plan. One thing both the opponents and supporters do agree on is that if Issue 3 and Issue 2 both pass, a court battle is ahead.
