Ohio lawmakers who agreed to override 57% of their voters will have the final say on cannabis and hemp policies in the Buckeye State.
Ohioans for Cannabis Choice, the campaign behind a citizen-proposed referendum that aimed to block legislative changes to their state’s 2023 voter-approved adult-use cannabis laws, failed to gather the required 248,092 valid signatures to secure a ballot position, the organization announced March 18.
The proposal would have repealed the first 120 pages of Senate Bill 56, legislation that Gov. Mike DeWine signed into law in December. In addition to prohibiting intoxicating hemp products beginning on March 20, the legislation criminalizes many cannabis-related acts that voters approved with the passage of Issue 2 in 2023, including the possession of cannabis purchased out of state and the transportation of cannabis not in its original packaging.
The legislation makes several other changes to Ohio’s voter-approved law, including prohibiting public cannabis consumption in places like music concerts and bar patios, lowering the THC cap on concentrates to 70%, lowering the possession limits for home growers to 2.5 ounces, removing excise tax revenue from funding social equity and jobs programs, as well as education, substance-abuse and addiction treatment programs, and a host of other provisions.
Ohioans for Cannabis Choice released a public statement on Wednesday, thanking more than 5,000 Ohio residents and business leaders who volunteered their time to help collect signatures on short notice: State Attorney General Dave Yost certified the proposed ballot initiative on Feb. 3, leaving the organization roughly six weeks to try and collect nearly a quarter million signatures.
“Unfortunately, we were not able to overcome a truncated time period to give voters the chance to say no to government overreach,” group spokesperson Dennis Willard said. “This doesn’t change the reality that marijuana will be recriminalized in Ohio, businesses will close, workers will lose their jobs, and consumers will be denied their right to products they should be able to purchase.”
S.B. 56 will criminalize home growing more than the allowable six plants per adult or 12 plants per residence (as opposed to criminalizing double the limits under current law), as well as smoking, combusting or vaporizing cannabis on a rental property if the landlord prohibits it in a lease agreement.
The new law also removes criminal protections for passengers in vehicles with an open cannabis package/container; repeals protections for adults who consume cannabis in private from facing disciplinary actions at work; and repeals non-discriminatory protections related to parental/child custody rights and qualifying for medical procedures, such as an organ transplant.
In addition, the law caps the number of dispensaries statewide at 400.
“Voters overwhelmingly supported legalizing cannabis in 2023,” Willard said in Wednesday’s statement. “It only makes sense that Gov. DeWine and state lawmakers should go back and ask those voters if they want to ban hemp and recriminalize marijuana. We know, and our elected leaders know, the answer would be a resounding no.”
While Ohio lawmakers aligned hemp-related provisions in S.B. 56 with a forthcoming federal ban on intoxicating hemp products that will go into effect nationwide in November, four Ohio-based brewers and craft beer distributors are suing state officials in the Ohio Supreme Court in an attempt to block the Buckeye State’s ban on hemp-derived beverages from going into effect on March 20.
Originally, lawmakers created a carve-out under S.B. 56 for businesses to continue selling hemp-derived drinks containing up to 5 milligrams of THC through the end of 2026, but DeWine line-item vetoed this carve-out so that hemp-derived THC beverages will be banned like all other intoxicating hemp products beginning this month.
The brewers argued that DeWine’s line-item veto represented “lawless executive overreach,” because it wiped out 17 sections of S.B. 56, spanning 15 pages, rather than a line, and none of those sections dealt with appropriations.
But Yost, in his capacity as Ohio’s chief legal officer, defended the governor’s line-item veto, saying, “The governor may veto any item in any bill making an appropriation of money.”
Specifically, S.B. 56 changes Ohio’s voter-approved law with respect to how adult-use cannabis excise tax revenue is appropriated.
Under current market conditions, Ohio dispensaries are on pace to generate more than $1 billion in adult-use sales in 2026, with a 10% cannabis excise tax, representing roughly $100 million, levied on those sales.
While Ohio lawmakers retained the 36% of excise tax revenue earmarked for municipalities that host dispensaries, they stripped other voter-approved allocations from that tax revenue, including 36% intended for a social equity and jobs program, and 25% for education, substance-abuse and addiction treatment programs. Instead, that money – more than $60 million in anticipated revenue in 2026 – will be deposited back into Ohio’s general fund.
In other words, state lawmakers decided to flip Ohio’s 2023 voters the bird, according to Sen. Bill DeMora, D-Columbus, who opposed the legislation when it was debated in December.
“It’s a spit in the face to the voters of Ohio who voted 57.4% to legalize marijuana like alcohol,” he said on the Senate floor. “In those two years, this body has done everything in its power to give Ohio voters the finger.”
