Backers of a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana suffered a big defeat at the ballot box on Tuesday. But that doesn’t mean the issue is dead.
Ohioans soundly rejected Issue 3, which would have legalized pot for both medical and recreational use. The plan, which specified ten growing sites owned by investors, had been heavily criticized by opponents for being a monopoly. Curt Steiner, the leader of the opposition effort, credited Ohio voters for his side’s victory.
“Never underestimate the wisdom of Ohio voters,” Steiner says.
“They saw through the smokescreen of the slick ads, fancy but deceptive mailings, phony claims about tax revenues and of course, Buddy the marijuana mascot.”
Democratic State Representative Mike Curtin said he thought the plan was flawed from the beginning.
“I think it speaks to how bad the plan was and the wisdom of the Ohio electorate seeing through it,” Curtin said.
“If TV ads rule the day, if voters get most of their information from tv ads, then issue 3 would have won and it would have won big. When you spend that much money, I mean $25 million in a campaign and $40 million overall from start to finish in terms of qualifying an issue for the ballot and you still get beat as badly as issue 3 got beat, that says something very profound about the voters and what this plan really was.”
Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted, another outspoken opponent of Issue 3, was jovial when asked about his thoughts on the way the Issue 3 campaign was conducted.
“I like the way they ran it because they lost,” said Husted.
But ResponsibleOhio leaders who ran the Issue 3 campaign say they think the opposition group unfairly characterized the issue as a monopoly. John Humphrey, an investor in the Summit County growing site, blamed opponents for his side’s loss, saying the issue wasn’t presented fairly.
“It was politically motivated as far as the ballot title language and the ballot language itself. And voters were not given a fair shot as to what the actual initiative was trying to present for the state.”
Jimmy Gould, the man responsible for raising money for Issue 3, said he thought that characterization was unfair. But he says this isn’t the end of the fight to legalize pot in Ohio.
“We are going to go back. We are going to start over, from the beginning. We are going to climb that mountain and change the status quo. We will do everything we have to do, put up whatever money we need to put up and we are committed to making this change.”
The executive director of the ReponsibleOhio campaign, Ian James, isn’t backing down either.
“This was, folks, the first step toward legalization. We are not going away, we are not going away.”
James says the next step is to figure out what went wrong and fix it for a future ballot issue.
