Ohio vote was against monopoly not marijuana, say campaigners

Marijuana legalization advocates in Ohio are turning their attention to 2016, after voters on Tuesday rejected a constitutional amendment to legalize recreational use in the Buckeye State – a measure critics said would have enshrined an oligopoly in the state constitution.

Issue 3, as the proposal was known to Ohioans, lost in a landslide at the ballot box Tuesday, an embarrassing defeat for backers of the campaign, who poured over $20m into the race. About 65% of Ohians opposed the initiative, and 35% voted in favor.

The defeat, however, does not represent a referendum on prohibition of marijuana in Ohio, legalization advocates said. Instead, they argued, it showed residents simply rejected the creation of a monopoly.

If Issue 3 had succeeded at the polls, it would have been the “worst thing that’s ever happened to this state”, said Mary Smith, executive director of north-west Ohio’s chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “This law [was] written to do nothing but satisfy the greed of investors.”

From the outset, the campaign was fraught with complexities and concerns from some legalization advocates who said it represented a corporatization of the national effort to end marijuana prohibition, with millionaires vying to latch on to a profitable industry leading the effort, rather than grassroots activists working to secure a victory.

The unusual circumstances led to the creation of a strange set of bedfellows in the effort to defeat Issue 3, with a bipartisan coalition of law enforcement officials and legalization advocates rallying against the proposal.

Indeed, Issue 3 stirred emotions among legalization advocates, as the measure would have placed the state’s marijuana cultivation exclusively in the hands of those who bankrolled the campaign. The motley crew of investors behind Issue 3 included a former member of boyband 98 Degrees, Nick Lachey; NBA hall of famer Oscar Robertson; and Woody Taft, a great-great-grandnephew of US president William Howard Taft.

Sri Kavuru, president of the marijuana legalization group Ohioans to End Prohibition, said a separate amendment could be placed before voters in next year’s general election.

“We have our own initiative; it’s already approved by the attorney general’s office and the ballot board,” Kavuru told the Guardian. “We’ve collected a lot of signatures so far.”

The group has until 1 July to collect the necessary number of signatures to make the ballot.

“We have a lot of phone calls to make and a lot of conversations to follow up on, but we’re going to plan our strategy and talk to some of the people who’ve committed funding to us and decide what way to move forward from there,” Kavuru said.

If successful, Kavuru’s proposed amendment would go into effect on 1 January 2017. Under the proposal, adults 21 and older would be able to possess up to 100 grams of marijuana, roughly 3.5oz. Adults 21 and older could grow up to six mature plants in their home, without a license.

A ‘pissed off’ electorate

Kavuru believes Issue 3 failed because “people rejected the idea of the monopoly”.

That point was echoed by voters who gathered on Tuesday evening at Michael’s Bar and Grill, a downtown Toledo restaurant where supporters of Toledo mayor hopeful Mike Ferner joined to watch election results trickle in.

Sitting in a booth inside Michael’s, Sean Nestor, a Toledo resident who worked as Ferner’s campaign manager, said both leftwing groups and libertarians were “pissed off” about Issue 3 because it “essentially gives wealthy people a stranglehold on what is finally starting to happen” in the pot legalization movement.

“It feels like we’ve had decades of low-self esteem because there haven’t been any victories in the marijuana legalization movement until recently,” Nestor said, explaining what he called the “we’ll-take-what-we-can-get” pro-legalization crowd that mobilized behind Issue 3.

“But we’re over here saying, ‘We don’t think so, we think that we can hold out.’ We can build something.”

Toledo residents on Tuesday pointed to the city’s recent campaign to decriminalize marijuana as an example of the support for legalization in Ohio. The ordinance, which passed with an overwhelming 70% of voter support, would eliminate penalties for possession of up to 200 grams of marijuana; however Ohio’s attorney general has since filed a lawsuit to invalidate portions of the measure. The case is pending.

Still, Ferner, who lost the race to be Toledo’s mayor to the incumbent Paula Hicks-Hudson, said passage of the ordinance is “proof” that Ohioans could support a traditional legalization campaign.

“You’re going to see campaigns like we’ve had in Toledo ... all over the state at the local level, and there is going to be a better measure come up to the state level now,” Ferner, a pro-legalization advocate who voted against Issue 3, told the Guardian.

Nestor agreed, saying polls indicating support for recreational marijuana in the state – where an estimated 666,000 residents use at least once a month – shows Issue 3 was defeated because the measure would have initially granted cultivation rights solely to the campaign’s backers.

“I think if this was a statewide legalization referendum – and it didn’t have that monopoly component – I think it would squeak by,” Nestor said. “Maybe not with a huge amount, but I think it would get 51%, 52%.”

Tom Angell, chairman of pro-legalization group Marijuana Majority, said it was “a shame” Ohioans did not have the chance to consider “sensible legislation” on Tuesday.

“Hopefully it’ll only be another election cycle or two until a more responsible team secures enough funding to put a better initiative on the ballot,” he said in a statement following the vote.

“Perhaps even the same group of investors cares enough about the real reasons for legalization to humbly receive the message Ohio voters just sent and try again in 2016 with a smarter proposal that establishes a more fairly regulated market.”

It’s unclear if ResponsibleOhio, which never shied away from the campaign’s connection to corporate interests, has plans to wage another campaign. Nevertheless, backers clearly were not deterred by the defeat on Tuesday. Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio, said in a statement that his group wasn’t “going away” anytime soon.

“All the things we fought for are true,” James said. “Ohioans still need treatment and deserve compassionate care. And our state needs the jobs and tax revenue that marijuana legalization will bring.”

Criticism of ResponsibleOhio stretched from the local level to Ohio’s legislature, which placed a competing measure on the ballot that would prohibit an “initiated constitutional amendment that would grant a monopoly” in the state. That amendment, called Issue 2, won by a slight margin; lawmakers behind the proposal contended it would have invalidated ResponsibleOhio’s measure had it won on Tuesday.

James had estimated Issue 3 would have created a marijuana industry generating over $550m annually for Ohio – with 85% of revenue allocated for state infrastructure repairs – and create an estimated 30,000 direct and indirect jobs. A joint fiscal analysis released in October by the Ohio department of taxation and office of budget and management produced a lower estimate, ranging from $133m-$293.3m per year.

The swing state of nearly 11.6 million people would have followed five other jurisdictions where both recreational and medicinal marijuana are now legal: the states of Oregon, Alaska, Colorado and Washington, along with Washington DC.