Home Grow Is Back on the Table: Ohio Lawmakers Take U-Turn on Changes to Cannabis Legalization

Ohio lawmakers leading the charge on enacting changes to the state’s voter-approved, adult-use cannabis legalization measure reversed course on several of their proposals after taking on pressure from their constituents.

The Ohio Senate General Government Committee unanimously approved revisions Dec. 6 to a bill that aligns more closely with Issue 2, the statutory measure that drew a 57% majority during last month’s election. Later on Wednesday evening, the full Senate voted in bipartisan fashion, 28-2, to pass the amended bill, which now must be approved by the House before going to the governor.

Specifically, the Senate-passed bill aims to allow Ohioans 21 and older to possess 2.5 ounces of cannabis (or 15 grams of extract) and home grow up to six plants for personal use, among other provisions that touch on THC caps, tax rates, tax revenue allocations, dispensary license limits, expungements and an expedited timeline for rolling commercial sales.

Many of these legislative changes veered from what the General Government Committee members originally adopted just two days earlier: Notably, they wanted to reduce the possession limit to 1 ounce and repeal the home grow provision from Issue 2 altogether. While the lawmakers embraced home grow in an unexpected U-turn on Wednesday, their six-plant limit is half the number of plants voters approved on Election Day.

But Ohio voters in large part played a role in the General Government Committee walking back on several of its provisions adopted just two days earlier, before the panel sent its final version to the Senate floor.

Sen. Michael Rulli, R-Salem, who chairs the committee, said Wednesday that his office and those of his colleagues fielded thousands of emails and hundreds upon hundreds of calls from constituents regarding the proposed changes.

“I think the people have spoken,” he said.

Following are some of the notable provisions passed Wednesday by the Senate:

• Adults 21 and older can possess 2.5 ounces of cannabis or 15 grams of extract (same as Issue 2)
• Adults 21 and older can home grow up to six plants per household (Issue 2 included 12 plants per household)
• A 15% cannabis excise tax will be levied at the point of sale (Issue 2 calls for a 10% excise tax on adult-use sales)
• There will be no cultivation tax (the Senate General Government Committee originally proposed Monday the created of a 15% gross receipts tax on cultivators)
• The THC potency will be capped at 35% for plant material and 50% for extracts (Issue 2 calls for ≤ 35% THC for plant material and ≤ 90% THC for extracts)
• The statewide cap on dispensaries licenses will be set at 350 (Issue 2 calls for allowing existing medical operators to transition roughly 130 dispensaries to adult-use as well as 50 new licenses for social equity applicants; the Department of Cannabis Control could add more licenses after two years)
• Existing medical dispensaries can transition to adult-use sales 90 days from when the bill is signed into law by the governor (Issue 2’s timeline for existing medical operators to transition to adult-use sales was nine months from the Dec. 7 effective date of the measure)
• Individuals 21 and older with prior cannabis-related arrests or convictions for possessing amounts of cannabis at 2.5 ounces or less will be provided automatic expungements (Issue 2 did not include an automatic expungement provision)
  

Sen. Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, who serves on the General Government Committee, explained these provisions to his colleagues Wednesday evening on the Senate floor.

“Whenever we endeavor on the process of making a bill, obviously it’s a collaborative process not only with the members of our chamber—our colleagues here—but it’s also a collaborative process in some cases with the affected industries, and it’s also a collaborative process with the people of the state of Ohio,” he said.

McColley said he went into the legislative process with some very basic goals: protect the access Ohioans voted for in Issue 2; eliminate the unregulated market; and implement an efficient program that doesn’t involve duplicative governmental efforts.

The senator also explained where revenue from the proposed 15% excise tax would be allocated under the Senate-passed bill. The committee members put an emphasis on public safety, the needs of municipalities to serve their constituent needs, and covering the costs associated with overseeing a statewide adult-use program, he said.

McColley said the tax revenue will go toward funding law enforcement training, substance abuse treatment and prevention programs (not just for cannabis, but for all substances in Ohio), suicide prevention, safe driving initiatives, drug task forces focused on eradicating the unlicensed market, poison control centers, and expungement costs for individuals with prior cannabis-related offenses, among other allocations.

But as the Senate-passed bill remains in the legislative process, Issue 2 went into effect Dec. 7 with Ohioans 21 and older now allowed to legally possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis and home grow up to six plants per person or 12 plants per household.

The fact that Ohioans can now possess cannabis without the means to legally purchase it was one main driver behind including an expedited timeline in the Senate-passed bill that calls for immediately launching adult-use cannabis dispensary operations via existing medical operators should the bill become law. It takes 90 days for laws to become effective in Ohio following a governor’s signature.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine addressed his concerns over allowing individual possession without licensed sales during a Dec. 6 press conference he held prior to the Senate floor vote on Wednesday evening.

“This bill deals with this, and deals with it by speeding up the timeframe when adults will be able to purchase recreational marijuana legally, thus reducing the opportunity for the black market to flourish,” DeWine said. “People will be getting it [from] many sources, none of them legally.”

Specifically motivating Ohio’s leadership to implement a commercial adult-use retail program as quickly as possible, Ohio Director of Commerce Sherry Maxfield pointed to delays in rolling out New York’s adult-use program.

New York’s former Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed adult-use legislation in March 2021, but licensed sales did not launch until 21 months later via a single dispensary in an effort allow social equity operators to get up and running before allowing big businesses, including the state’s existing medical operators, to enter the market.

As of December 2023, only 22 dispensaries are licensed to operate with just more than $100 million in sales recorded through the first 10 months of the year. This has left the door wide open for the unregulated market to fill in the access gaps.

“To the governor’s point about the delay, I’m going to use New York as an example,” Maxfield said Wednesday during the governor’s press conference. “For those of you who follow this issue, it’s pretty well-known; it took a long time to get the program up and running. In Manhattan alone, they had over 1,000 pop up, i.e., illegal stores. And so, this is a race to try and close the door.”

Originally, the General Government Committee’s proposal from Monday would have delayed an adult-use sales launch for 12 months in Ohio. But that was before the committee members received public testimony during a hearing on Tuesday and decided to take the U-turn on their proposal this Wednesday.

Sen. Bill Demora, D-Columbus, the lone Democrat on the committee, said during Wednesday’s Senate floor session that the committee’s decision to walk back on several of its original proposals to more closely align with the voter-approved measure swayed his final decision in support of the bill.

“I came into committee on Monday saying there’s no way in the world I would ever support this because the will of the voters was nowhere to be found,” he said. “Now, I’m actually standing here in support of this bill … We listened to the voters, and this bill is so much better [Wednesday] than it was on Monday when we started committee."