Key marijuana legislation fails to pass in marathon Statehouse session
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio lawmakers spent 12 hours advancing legislation on Wednesday, in their last session before breaking for the summer. Adult-use marijuana related policy, which has been in the works for months, did not move forward, in the latest of several failed attempts.
“Well, I’m disappointed,” Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said. “We did have three of our senators working in earnest and we were pretty close to a deal and without, I guess, blowing anybody up, we were informed [on Tuesday] it wasn’t going to move.”
“There was just a lot of different opinions,” Speaker of the Ohio House Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) said. “And it’s one of those bills or types of issues you can put something in that changes something that gains support from a certain group of folks and then all of a sudden it loses support from another group of folks.”
Still, lawmakers are working to create guardrails, clarify or add to the law that voters passed in November when they voted for Issue 2. One of the last actions the House took on Wednesday night was an attempt to pass some sort of marijuana policy as an amendment to another bill. But the attempt to even hear the amendment was voted down.
“I still think there is opportunity to fill in the gaps on some of the things that Issue 2 did not address,” Stephens said.
The Senate adjourned before the House even considered their adult-use amendment, meaning even if the House did pass something, it still would have been held up for months.
“We sent the bill over in December, we thought that was, if nothing else, certainly a good document to work with,” Huffman said. “This is a very complex issue; it involves a lot of money. I don’t think you can wait until the day before the last session when everybody’s going and say, ‘let’s try to solve this problem.’”
“We believe there needs to be some guardrails, yes we support the people’s voice with the ballot initiative, but they couldn’t think of everything, not everything was in that ballot initiative,” Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood) said. “Starting with expungement for folks and a number of other things, talking about outdoor use, there’s all kinds of things.”
This comes as adult-use marijuana has been legal in the state for more than six months now, and the start of legal sales are likely around the corner.
“It’s really difficult, I think, to go back and change something that the voters have passed, and many legislators seem to not have an appetite for that,” Ohio House Minority Leader Allison Russo (D-Upper Arlington) said. “As this goes further along and the implementation starts and the licensure application starts, this gets harder and harder to roll back pieces of this.”
“Honoring the will of the voters is very important and that part has been done. This was passed in November and it’s still the law of land,” Stephens said.
Despite the urgency to get something done, hashing out the details has proven to be difficult. Antonio attributes the inaction to the fact that Republican lawmakers “do not really want adult-use to begin with.”
“I think they’re having a hard time coming to an agreement on how to allow something to go forward that they really don’t want to see go forward to begin with,” she said.
But lawmakers do agree on one thing – the regulation of Delta 8, or low-level THC. Gov. Mike DeWine has been urging lawmakers to place regulations and an age restriction on Delta 8 products, as right now, any Ohioan can buy those products.
“Those discussions hopefully will continue through the summer and making sure that we do that correctly,” Stephens said. “I think it’s probably best to try to handle that issue in separate bills instead of one mega bill to try and get that.”
“We’ve been saying since the day after the election, ‘there’s a lot of things that need to get taken care of,’ so, we’ll see,” Huffman said.