Ohio Issue 3: Cost For Losing Marijuana Campaign at $17 a Vote

Filing final campaign-finance reports Friday, the private investor group that pushed marijuana legalization this year in Ohio spent more than $17 a vote in its losing effort for Issue 3, while opponents spent less than a dollar a vote to defeat the measure.The campaign was the most expensive marijuana issue in the nation's history.

ResponsibleOhio and Ohioans Against Marijuana Monopolies turned in the last official paperwork of the 2015 campaign to the Ohio secretary of state. The documents illustrated the unusual election’s counterintuitive result: In politics, the team with the most money usually wins – but not for Issue 3.

Issue 3 would have created a 10-farm system to cultivate a commercial marijuana crop in Ohio, regulated by a separate government commission. ResponsibleOhio put together 10 groups of investors who would have purchased the properties.

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