Ohio's revenue and pitfalls provide insight amid Pennsylvania's marijuana legalization battle

Miami Herald

5 days ago

A preview of a possible future policy debate in Pennsylvania - with such questions as: "Should we let them grow 12 pot plants or six?" and "What about all those Poison Control calls?" - now is playing out in Ohio.
The Buckeye State was the most recent of Pennsylvania's neighbors to legalize recreational marijuana. About 10 months into the new era, lawmakers in Columbus already want to overhaul the law that made cannabis legal.
It's happening just as Pennsylvania lawmakers are reaching crunch time in their own marijuana musings. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a legalization advocate, tucked $500 million-plus in anticipated revenue from legalization into his proposed 2025-26 budget, and the deadline for state budget approval is June 30.
Ohio, like Pennsylvania, has allowed medical marijuana sales for years.
But reviews of how things have gone since recreational sales began on Aug. 6 are decidedly mixed.
"I am not sure they did anything right," Tim Johnson, a consultant who has testified in the Statehouse in Columbus, said of the law's creators. Johnson, a retired Ohio law enforcement officer, consults for the marijuana industry and advocates for veterans, consumers and patients.
Ohio's law got on the books via a Nov. 7, 2023, voter referendum. Tom Haren, an attorney with a Cleveland firm and a leading proponent of the ballot measure, praised its success.
Naysayers, he said, have been proven wrong.
"As expected, a dispensary shows in somebody's neighborhood, and all of the boogeymen that the prohibitionists warned about never show up," Haren said.
Almost a year into the experiment, Ohio lawmakers have proposed changes to the revenue flow; putting a cap on the number of dispensaries; changing the licensing setup; and reducing the number of plants that can be grown in a home from 12 to 6.
The activity in Ohio has the attention of Pennsylvania lawmakers. And it has fueled proponents' arguments that potential tax revenue is leaving Pennsylvania as marijuana buyers head to other states.
Pennsylvania is "late to the game" but can "learn from the mistakes" elsewhere, Democratic Rep. Rick Krajewski of Philadelphia told a House committee in Harrisburg on May 5. A 173-page legalization bill he sponsored passed the Democratic-controlled House that week, but was then voted down by a Republican-controlled Senate committee.
Ohio's 2023 approval happened via an "initiated statute" process in which non-lawmakers who feel an issue has been mishandled or ignored can have a proposed law put to a vote of Ohio residents. At the time of the Ohio vote, four other Pennsylvania neighbors - New Jersey, New York, Maryland and Delaware - had all made recreational cannabis use legal within the previous three years.
The Ohio ballot measure passed by a 57% to 43% margin.
The law created a Division of Cannabis Control to oversee the system. It set a specific limit on the level of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, content permitted; allowed the growing of 12 marijuana plants in a home where two or more people who are over 21 reside; and set an "adult use cannabis tax" of 10% on marijuana purchases made at dispensaries.
It also left the state's medical marijuana program intact.
How it has worked in Ohio
As of May 24, Ohio's 10-month-old recreational industry had sold 81,900 pounds of marijuana for nearly $540 million via nearly 7.5 million individual transactions.
The 147 licensed dispensaries pay an initial fee of $70,000 and another $70,000 every two years for license renewal. Another 12 dispensaries are operating on provisional licenses.
There are also 37 holders of licenses for growers and cultivators. The most popular level of that license has an annual license renewal fee of $200,000. Testing labs also must be licensed.
What Ohio did not do, according to Johnson, was protect consumers, patients and workers.
In fact, Johnson said the Ohio law created an "entrapment program" for users because it failed to increase what he described as the ultra-low levels of metabolized marijuana that currently exist in state law as measuring sticks for intoxication. Hence, Johnson said, someone who uses a small amount of marijuana one day may still have a threshold-breaking blood- or urine-test level weeks later.
For employers, he said, this means a lot of positive drug tests among prospective employees. "Employers are starting to find out, 'Hey, we've got to stop testing for THC so we can hire people,'" Johnson said.
The Ohio statute allows the Legislature to change the referendum-adopted law, and multiple change bills have been submitted.
Haren, who views the Ohio program as a success, said it helped to build it off the existing medical marijuana infrastructure. Medical sellers were able to accommodate additional requirements under the new recreational law and - in Haren's view - operationally flip a switch and sell to both markets.
"The only real difference is who is eligible to buy it," he said.
Children, poisonings and hospitals
Still, the broader Ohio discussion isn't over on whether recreational marijuana is a good thing.
Testimony submitted to Ohio lawmakers a few weeks ago by a group of medical leaders at the state's children's hospitals sounded an alarm.
"The number of accidental poisonings reported to Ohio Poison Centers for all age groups has increased 20-fold from baseline levels prior to the introduction of retail medical marijuana in early 2019," they said, with younger children suffering the most. Symptoms can include hallucinations, confusion, loss of consciousness and respiratory failure.
In 2024, they said, nearly 500 children under 6 years old were seen in emergency rooms after ingesting a THC-based product.
The much-respected Cleveland Clinic maintains a list of marijuana risks on its website that include an increased chance of auto crashes; increased chance of injury among adults over 65; contamination with pesticides or other harmful substances; and an addiction rate of about 1 in 10 adult users.
Aaron Baer, president of the Columbus-based nonprofit Center for Christian Virtue, said his advice to Pennsylvania lawmakers is to "run away from this as fast as you can, for your kids' sake."
In terms of academic achievement, economic development and helping people in poverty, it is difficult to argue that having more marijuana users benefits a state, he said.
"It goes contrary to everything else we say we care about," he said.
How other states did it
Among Pennsylvania's neighbors, West Virginia is the only state that has not decriminalized recreational marijuana. And while the other states changed their laws in somewhat quick succession, they did it in different ways.
In 2021, the governors of New Jersey and New York each signed bills that allowed marijuana use, and in 2022 Maryland voters passed a ballot referendum on the issue with 67% of voters in favor.
In 2023, Delaware Gov. John Carney put out a statement that said he remained concerned about marijuana legalization, and "especially about the potential effects on Delaware's children, on the safety of our roadways and on our poorest neighborhoods."
Carney declined to sign two bills that reached his desk - one to remove all state-level penalties for simple possession and the other creating regulations - and the bills lapsed into law.
In Harrisburg, legalization concepts continue to percolate after the May 13 Senate committee shootdown of the House-passed bill. The Senate and House return to Harrisburg for voting sessions starting Monday.
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