From left, attorney Chris Stock, ResponsibleOhio chief Ian James, and spokesman Lydia Bolander are navigating the effort to legalize marijuana in Ohio.
THE BLADE/TOM TROY
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Last of three parts
At least eight other attempts have been made since 2011 to get a proposed Constitutional amendment legalizing marijuana on the Ohio ballot.
None has made the grade, some falling laughably short with too few signatures or other flaws, but always providing an opening for a pot-related quip about organizers being in a stoned marijuana haze.
That’s not happening with ResponsibleOhio.
This year’s campaign to legalize marijuana in Ohio is so strait-laced, the lawyer who wrote the proposed amendment, Chris Stock of Cincinnati, tells audiences that he’s never smoked marijuana and didn’t know much about it until given the assignment about 15 months ago to help get it on the ballot.
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With ResponsibleOhio, the marijuana movement aims for the mainstream in Ohio, a key political swing state that virtually defines Middle America. Organizers are hoping that their mix of regulation, social justice, medical necessity, tax generation, and business opportunity will resonate with Ohio voters.
ResponsibleOhio’s proposal would permit adults 21 and over to buy and carry one ounce of marijuana, to grow up to four pot plants, and to possess up to an extra eight ounces of “usable marijuana” from their homegrown stock.
The proposal would allow up to 1,100 permits in the state for the establishment of pot-processing centers and retail businesses to sell marijuana, as well as marijuana edibles, drops, oils, concentrates for smoking, pills for medical users, and vaporizer cigarettes. Retail outlets could sell only marijuana and related products and must be approved by voters in the local precincts where the stores would be located.
Unique to Ohio’s proposed marijuana constitutional amendment is the plan for cultivating marijuana.
The amendment designates 10 sites by parcel number where marijuana could be grown commercially. Those 10 sites are already owned or under contract to 10 groups of investors or individual investors who have kicked in $4 million each for the campaign. That means it starts off with almost as much money as was spent — $47 million — to pass the casino constitutional amendment of 2009 in Ohio.
It would also allow doctors to prescribe marijuana for a wide range of “debilitating medical conditions,” including cancer, HIV, Alzheimer’s, sickle-cell anemia, and other conditions such as severe pain, traumatic stress disorder, severe nausea, seizures, and persistent muscle spasms.
And the amendment sets up the Ohio Marijuana Control Commission to regulate marijuana and award permits for retail marijuana stores.
The plan imposes a 15 percent tax on growers and processors, and a 5 percent tax on retailers, all based on gross sales. Marijuana buyers will pay state and county sales taxes on their pot purchases but not an extra pot tax.
ResponsibleOhio projects $2.2 billion annually in marijuana sales by the year 2020, with $554 million in marijuana tax revenue to be distributed mainly to county and municipal governments.
Ian James, executive director of ResponsibleOhio and the veteran of many statewide petition drives responsible for more than 5 million signatures, says his group takes the marijuana campaign “from tie-dyed to suit-and-tie.”
During a recent interview at the Victorian house in Columbus where ResponsibleOhio has its offices, a reporter taking notes wore the only tie. But you get the point: ResponsibleOhio is about business, not getting high.
“Ohio is a very purple state. It’s not a red state. It’s not a blue state. You’ve got to have an amendment that really reflects the Midwestern values of the people of Ohio,” Mr. James said.
The organization hired Mr. Stock, who once was a deputy attorney general under Republican Secretary of State Jim Petro, to craft an amendment that aims to satisfy the concerns of Ohio voters.
“I think people sort of look at me strangely when I say I haven’t used marijuana. I came at this completely from a public policy perspective,” Mr. Stock said.
The campaign conducts polls weekly and is bringing in the national data team used by President Obama, 270 Strategies, to hone the campaign.
Petition under way
Voters in four states and the District of Columbia have fully legalized marijuana, and 19 other states have passed medical marijuana laws, including Michigan. Ohio aims to be the first to jump from a total ban to full legalization.
ResponsibleOhio, based in Columbus, is circulating a petition to put its “Marijuana Legalization Amendment” to the state Constitution on the Nov. 3 ballot.
The group needs 305,591 signatures but is shooting for 700,000 by a July 1 deadline. It has paid staff in four Ohio cities, with an office in the former Secor Hotel in downtown Toledo. The Toledo location is significant — the hotel bar got the first license in the city to serve liquor by the glass when Prohibition ended in 1934.
The 10 parcels listed by the organization as future marijuana grow centers are clustered around Cincinnati, Columbus, Cleveland, and Toledo. The Toledo parcel is a 28.5-acre cornfield near a landfill on Hagman Road in North Toledo under purchase contract to Cincinnati real estate developer David Bastos, 36.
If the amendment passes, he is expected to invest as much as $30 million and hire as many as 300 people to run the “grow.” Though he and the other nine investment groups are partners in passing the amendment, they would become competitors in selling marijuana statewide, according to Mr. James.
None of the other marijuana state laws — in Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Alaska, or the District of Columbia — restricts marijuana cultivation to so few growers.
The ResponsibleOhio amendment isn’t the only one pending this year, but is the only one that appears to have the financial resources to gather the hundreds of thousands of signatures to ensure the minimum of valid signatures by the July 1 deadline.
Backers say marijuana use is already pervasive and the amendment brings the business into the open so it can be regulated, taxed, legally enjoyed, and used for medical treatment.
“The reality is you can pick up the phone and you can call and text and email and have marijuana delivered to you in 10 minutes,” Mr. James said. “You can get marijuana delivered to you faster than you can get a pizza.”
Who’s who
ResponsibleOhio draws its operatives and leadership from the ranks of experienced Democratic Party strategists and from people around the state who have been financially successful in business, sports, and fashion — with backgrounds in philanthropy, but not in marijuana.
Mr. James ran the successful 2011 campaign to repeal Senate Bill 5, a bill to weaken collective bargaining for public employee unions, under a combined effort of the Ohio Democratic Party and labor unions.
ResponsibleOhio’s media consultant, Dennis Willard, owner of Precision Media, was a consultant to that campaign, and he also was a media consultant for David Pepper, who ran for attorney general last year and is now the state Democratic chairman.
ResponsibleOhio is represented by veteran Ohio Democratic lawyer Donald McTigue of Columbus.
Its investors include successful restaurant entrepreneur Bobby George of Lakewood, pioneering basketball player Oscar Robertson, famous fashion designer Nanette Lepore, and even someone with a papal seal of approval: investor Alan Mooney, who was dubbed a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher in 2007 by Pope Benedict XVI and goes by the title “Sir Alan.”
The investors include brothers Woody and Dudley Taft, Jr., relatives of President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft, putting one of the most trusted Republican names in Ohio at the service of marijuana enterprise. The two are investors in a proposed marijuana growing facility planned for Butler County.
Not only does ResponsibleOhio cloak itself in religion, sports, and philanthropy, it is making a direct appeal to African-Americans and progressives because of the disproportionate impact that marijuana enforcement has on blacks, according to the ACLU.
According to research by the American Civil Liberties Union, blacks are almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana offenses in Ohio than whites. In Allen County, blacks are 13 times more likely to face arrest for possession of weed. As part of the campaign, ResponsibleOhio plans to call for legislation to commute any jail terms or prison sentences for offenses that would no longer be illegal under the new amendment.
And while ResponsibleOhio appears to have connections with the Ohio Democratic establishment, the state’s top elected Republicans are unanimously opposed to the proposed marijuana amendment.
At a briefing for statehouse reporters in January, the Ohio secretary of state, auditor, treasurer, and attorney general declared their opposition to the plan. Attorney General Mike DeWine said it was “stupid,” and Treasurer Josh Mandel joked that it would boost Girl Scout cookie sales. A spokesman for Gov. John Kasich said he is also opposed to legalized marijuana.
Jon Allison, a Columbus attorney with ties to Republican leadership, so far is leading the organized opposition, that he said will include anti-drug activists, law enforcement, and business and manufacturing representatives.
He said polls showing that 52 percent of Ohio likely voters support the amendment, or even the 58 percent that ResponsibleOhio says are in favor of it, is too low for supporters to have confidence the measure will pass in November.
“It’s very difficult to get a yes. You’re going to lose people as you get into complex issues. If they haven’t taken the time to learn the details they’re going to default to no,” Mr. Allison said.
He agreed ResponsibleOhio is trying hard to “be” Ohio.
“They have people who are very respectable business people who are bankrolling this thing. I assume those personalities will be part of their campaign and their sales pitch. The question becomes can 10 successful resumes drown out the fact that what they’re really proposing is a cartel scheme and constitutionally protected monopolies? We’ll see what the voters have to say,” Mr. Allison said.
ResponsibleOhio strenuously disagrees with terms such as cartel and monopoly, saying each of the 10 growers is independent and will be in competition with each other.
Local politicians may be attracted to the potential marijuana tax revenue. Organizers project $17 million a year into the coffers of local governments.
Revenue welcome
Call it pot for potholes.
“It’s new money, it’s unrestricted money,” said Lucas County Commissioner Pete Gerken, who favors putting the question on the ballot. He said the sponsors are following the successful template created by the 2009 casino ballot question that enshrined four Ohio casinos in the Ohio Constitution.
“The casino in Toledo has enhanced our revenues in Lucas County,” Mr. Gerken said. “Both houses [of the General Assembly] and many governors refused to act on an emerging social issue. The industry came in and took charge. They got it passed because the legislature failed to act.”
The marijuana industry is taking a leaf from the casinos’ book.
Mr. Gerken said he’s not a big fan of the ResponsibleOhio’s 10-grower model, but said he thinks the good outweighs the bad.
“We’re already letting cartels run the marijuana business — criminal cartels,” he said.
Opposition to the plan so far is coming from opposite ends of the drug use spectrum.
Users and advocates of medical marijuana are furious that only 10 growers of commercial marijuana will be allowed to cultivate the plant.
Mary Smith, president of the northwest Ohio chapter of NORML.
The Blade/Jetta Fraser
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That’s not enough, and it’s not fair to the farmers who should have the right to grow marijuana and hemp, said Toledoan Mary Smith, president of the Northwest Ohio Chapter of the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws.
At 49, she has been a regular user and fervent advocate of legalizing marijuana in the state of Ohio since her 20s.
She doesn’t like the plan because of what she sees as the heavy hand of corporate greed.
“It doesn’t even allow the citizens in on the plan. How dare you tell us that the citizens of our state can’t have a piece of that? They want to corner this market, and they want to take it away from the people who need it, who could benefit from it,” Ms. Smith said.
Ms. Smith, who lives in the Highland Heights neighborhood of South Toledo, is the wife of a truck driver. For eight years she ran a business called “The Hippie Shop” on Broadway in South Toledo, selling homemade clothing, beads, and pipes.
“ResponsibleOhio wants to take a decriminalized state — and we are a very decriminalized state — and to take a law — it sounds stupid to say this — that’s as fair as ours is currently and to turn it into a law that will make young people felons, that’s wrong. It’s just wrong on every level,” Ms. Smith said.
Ms. Smith is hoping that ResponsibleOhio spends its $40 million educating the public about the harmlessness and benefits of marijuana but falls just short of passage. In 2016, hemp’s true believers come back “with a real plan for Ohio.”
“That wasn’t our strategy, but I’ll take it,” Ms. Smith said with a laugh.
Contact Tom Troy: tomtroy@theblade.com or 419-724-6058 or on Twitter @TomFTroy.