When Ohio voters go to the polls next month, they’ll be voting on a proposed constitutional amendment that could legalize marijuana. But that won’t be the only issue on the ballot.
As Ohio Public Radio’s Jo Ingles reports in the last of her five part series, it will be up to issue three supporters to make sure their voters know what to vote for…and against.
ResponsibleOhio has to convince key groups to support Issue 3. Among the groups being targeted are African American communities throughout Ohio. Cleveland City Council Member George Forbes is helping ResponsibleOhio with that effort. He says it’s important to realize out of every ten people arrested for marijuana in Cleveland, eight are African Americans.
“White people are not arrested. I have two grandsons who went to high school throughout the years in the Eastern suburbs and when they’d go out in those suburbs at night, the police would stop and search them for marijuana. White kids, they’d stop and take them home. Therein is the difference,” Forbes says.
Forbes says national studies on marijuana also show minorities are disproportionally affected by marijuana arrests. The ACLU of Ohio says that’s one reason it is supporting Issue 3 too.
ResponsibleOhio is also targeting is college students and young adults. The group has a controversial mascot that looks like a cross between Popeye and Oscar the grouch – a smiling muscular cartoon like character with a bud of pot as its head. ResponsibleOhio’s Ian James says that mascot, called Buddie, has an identity.
“Buddie is a gender neutral mascot. Buddie is a fictitious character that has a 21 and up club. Buddie works on the college campuses to reach the Millennial voters and talk to them, helps them with voter registration, vote by mail, social media, it is all geared to people who are 21 and up,” James said.
Opponents of ResponsibleOhio worry Buddie will appeal to children instead.
But ResponsibleOhio has more to worry about than just convincing voters to vote yes on three. The group also has to convince Ohioans to vote no on Issue 2, an issue put on the ballot by lawmakers. It is meant to nullify Issue 3 if it passes by putting language in the constitution that would restrict monopolies, which Secretary of State Jon Husted says ResponsibleOhio’s plan is.
“If they didn’t want it called a monopoly, they shouldn’t have created a monopoly, that’s what it is. I mean, you look at the dictionary and that’s the definition of a monopoly, when a small group of people have control of a commodity and they have pricing power of how it’s both produced and sold and that’s exactly what this does,” Husted says.
ResponsibleOhio’s Ian James says there are ten growing sites throughout the state and the locations and owners of those are spelled out in this plan. But he says Issue 3 is not a monopoly because there would be 1100 retail stores that anyone could own and he says many more Ohioans could get licenses to grow their own pot.
“If you can grow it, it is not a monopoly. Monopoly suggests one entity, or two entities, control the entire market. That just aint so,” James explains.
James says there are plenty of monopolies in Ohio and says Husted is being a bully by insisting on using the word “monopoly” in the ballot language. But the Ohio Supreme Court okayed the use of the word “monopoly” in the title of Issue 3, which will appear above all the rest of the language describing the marijuana legalization plan.
And the dueling issues have created some problems with another group ResponsibleOhio is hoping will give it support – activists who want pot legalized. Some have said they don’t like the growing sites and other regulations in Issue 3, but others say they’ll vote for it because they just want to see marijuana use made legal. And Issue 2 – the anti-monopoly issue – has some of them very worried. The Ohio Rights Group wants to put a marijuana legalization issue on the ballot next year, and organizers fear that if Issue 2 passes, it will make it more costly and difficult. Mary Jane Borden with the Ohio Rights Group says it would give the state too much power.
“We have to get all of the signatures submitted, pay for all of that, which still could come to the millions of dollars, go through all of the processing issues and all of the preparation to give that to the Secretary of State’s office, only to have it stop then, after the ballot board has started reviewing the language to give this monopoly review,” Borden says.
So Borden says her group will work to defeat Issue 2. If both Issues 2 and 3 pass, Husted says the anti-monopoly proposal will nullify the marijuana legalization plan. And if that happens, it is a pretty good bet that the future of legalized marijuana will end up in the courts.
