COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a controversial marijuana legalization measure at the polls. Recent surveys showed support in Ohio for marijuana legalization, but voters balked at the specifics of the ballot initiative, which would have created an oligopoly on marijuana production for a small handful of the initiative’s wealthy donors.
With 41 percent of precincts accounted for, The Associated Press called the election with voters rejecting the measure by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, with 65 percent opposing and only 35 percent in favor.
The initiative faced an uphill battle from the start. The first stumbling block was the nature of the ballot measure itself. It would have essentially written a marijuana oligopoly into the state’s constitution, with the measure’s wealthy backers as the only recipients of licenses to grow marijuana commercially. That didn’t sit right with many of the national advocacy groups that have backed successful legalization measures in other states. The Drug Policy Alliance and the Marijuana Policy Project refrained from endorsing the Ohio bill. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws gave it a tepid eleventh-hour endorsement, as did Law Enforcement Officers Against Prohibition.
“What was most offensive about (the Ohio measure) was that they wanted to make it a constitutionally mandated oligopoly in perpetuity,” said Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance. “It’s clearly the case that the oligopoly provision turned people off.”
The measure was so opposed by Ohio’s legislature that it wrote a competing initiative that appeared on the ballot — one that would explicitly outlaw voter-approved monopolies and oligopolies like the one the legalization measure would create. That measure ultimately passed. While it was rendered moot this year by the failure of the legalization initiative, the anti-monopoly amendment does effectively mean that similar legalization efforts will not find their way on to Ohio ballots in coming years.
Finally, holding the vote in an off-year election meant facing an electorate that’s typically older and more conservative than a presidential electorate.
