Cannabis
What will happen if pot become legal in Ohio? Thomas Suddes on Issue 1 – Medical Marijuana Program Connection
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Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
The biggest question about Issue 2 — the marijuana legalization measure on November’s statewide ballot — isn’t whether voters will pass it.
They will.
Instead, the question is what the GOP-run General Assembly will do to complicate, obstruct, or stymie what voters want.
Your first thought is probably that the legislature would think twice about defying the will of the state’ voters.
Suddes:Some Republicans support abortion and other lessons from failed ‘power grab’
But Ohio’s General Assembly, as gerrymandered by the GOP, doesn’t represent voters. Instead, it represents party-line Republicans, some of whom call to mind H.L. Mencken’s definition of Puritanism: “The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
And the marijuana ballot issue proposes a state law, not a state constitutional amendment.
Will lawmaker go against the will of Ohioans on marijuana?
Changing a constitutional amendment would require another statewide vote. But the General Assembly, as with any other state law, can change a petition-proposed law — and that’s what the marijuana legislation issue, if OK’d by voters, would be: a law, not a constitutional amendment.
The instinctive response is that it would be politically mad for the GOP-run General Assembly to mess with voters over the marijuana initiative by weakening any pro-user features.
But this…
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