COLUMBUS – Voters rejected a ballot measure that would have made Ohio the first state to make marijuana legal for both recreational and medical use in a single stroke.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
The initiative’s failure, by a hefty 65-35 percent margin, follows an expensive campaign, a legal fight over its ballot wording and an investigation into the proposal’s petition signatures.
And, supporters indicated they were not going away, hinting that some kind of marijuana issue would be on a ballot in 2016.
“We trust the voters. We started the conversation, and we’re going to continue the conversation…The status quo doesn’t work, it’s unacceptable and we’re not going away,” said Ian James, Executive Director ResponsibleOhio, the group behind the measure.
The constitutional amendment dubbed Issue 3 on Tuesday’s ballot would have allowed adults 21 and older to use, buy or grow certain amounts of marijuana. It also would have established a regulatory and taxation scheme while creating a network of 10 growing facilities.
Granting those 10 facilities “exclusive rights” was called a monopoly by the Secretary of State was targeted in a separate ballot question aimed at preventing monopolies from being inserted into Ohio’s Constitution for the economic benefits of a few.
“Issue 3 was designed and built primarily to garner massive and exclusive profits for a small group of self-selected wealthy investors. Issue 3 was about greed, not good public policy,” Curt Steiner, campaign director for Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies, said.
The measure known as Issue 2 keeps individuals or private economic interests from placing new monopolies, cartels or oligopolies into the Ohio Constitution for their own benefit. It was approved by a narrower 52-48 percent margin.
The defeat of Issue 3 averts a court challenge can be avoided as to which issue would have trumped the other.
Turnout in Ohio was low, as expected, with approximately 42 percent of voters heading to the polls, casting a total of 3.2 million ballots, according to Secretary of State Jon Husted.