Ohio Republicans file cannabis legalization law, activists prove no errors in their petition

By Jelena Martinovic

Ohio lawmakers recently tabled a bill to legalize cannabis in the state.

The move follows a recent attempt to get a full marijuana legalization initiative on the Ohio ballot, with activists nearing the completion of the first phase of their signature campaign.

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The law was officially introduced by Reps Jamie Callender (R) and Ron Ferguson (R) almost two months after they first announced their plan to legalize the work.

The Ohio Adult Use Act would allow adults 21 and older to purchase and possess up to 50 grams of cannabis. In addition, the new law allows the cultivation of up to six plants, only three of which are mature, for personal use, as well as giving away up to 25 grams of marijuana between adult consumers without compensation.

The money from a 10% marijuana sales tax would go to general revenue, law enforcement, mental health, addiction treatment, and convalescent services.

The state Department of Commerce would regulate the new recreational marijuana and existing medical cannabis programs and issue business licenses through a new marijuana control department.

The new bill would also restrict regulators to

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While provisions to promote social justice by repealing previous cannabis convictions or prioritizing licensing for communities hardest hit by the ban were left out in the introduced version of the bill, a spokesman for the legislature’s bureau told Marijuana Moment that ” the plan is still to add any ”. required language on this subject once we have received it in committee. Talks about modifications continue, but with Thanksgiving here and the end of the year approaching, we wanted to get the ball rolling with the introduction. “

Ohio activists prove the local marijuana decriminalization initiative had enough signatures after all

Meanwhile, marijuana activists in Buckey state have recently proven that they actually submitted enough valid signatures to present a local decriminalization initiative to Kent voters after missing the 2021 election due to a verification error by district officials, The Portager reported.

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According to Portage County’s electoral committee, the Sensitive Marijuana Campaign was missing four signatures to qualify for last month’s vote. Kent is in Portage County.

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However, the activists’ findings suggest officials mistakenly marked multiple signatures as invalid.

A bipartisan team asked by the Portage County Board to consider the three-part petitions from the Sensitive Marijuana petition found that the electoral initiative had collected 815 signatures, well over 806, which is required to trigger a referendum.

“That was the result that we expected from the start,” said Sensible Kent campaign manager Michael Fricke.

Now that the electoral committee is expected to inform Kent City Council of its updated results, it remains to be seen what the council will do next.

This article originally appeared on Benzinga and was republished with permission.