Ohio Activists Launch Signature Drive For Referendum To Block Marijuana And Hemp Restrictions

*“We have a ground swell and folks are angry. [Politicians] hate the fact
that people spoke and now they’re trying to re-criminalize cannabis and ban
products.”*

*By Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal*

Ohioans for Cannabis Choice are starting to collect signatures to get a
referendum on the ballot to block a new law that will change the state’s
voter-passed recreational marijuana law and ban intoxicating hemp products.
But they are up against a March 19 deadline.

They need more than 248,000 signatures to get on the November 3 ballot. The
group will also need 3 percent of an individual county’s gubernatorial
turnout in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.

Despite the looming deadline, Joey Ellwood, a hemp farmer in Tuscarawas
County, is confident they will get the needed signatures to get the
referendum on the ballot.

“We have a ground swell and folks are angry,” he said. “[Politicians] hate
the fact that people spoke and now they’re trying to re-criminalize
cannabis and ban products, and we’re not going to stand for that.”

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost initially rejected the referendum’s summary
language, but approved it last week after Ohioans for Cannabis Choice made
changes to the langauge.

“We are on a limited timeline,” Ellwood said. “The attorney general took a
significant amount of time to go through that, which put us up against it.”

Ohio Senate Bill 56—set to take effect March 20—will reduce the THC levels
in adult-use marijuana extracts from a maximum of 90 percent down to a
maximum of 70 percent, cap THC levels in adult-use flower to 35 percent,
and prohibit smoking in most public places.

It prohibits possessing marijuana in anything outside of its original
packaging and criminalizes bringing legal marijuana from another state back
to Ohio.

The legislation also requires drivers to store marijuana in the trunk of
their car while driving.

Ohioans voted to legalize marijuana in 2023, recreational sales started in
August 2024, and sales totaled more than $836 million in 2025.

The legislation would also ban intoxicating hemp products.

“I have many patients that have maintained their sobriety from drugs and
alcohol due to CBD and CBD-combined products,” said Dr. Bridget Williams, a
board-certified family physician.

“I also have a lot of patients that have been able to maintain sobriety by
using cannabis related products, CBD, and THC for social interaction.”

She founded Green Harvest Health, an Ohio medical cannabis clinic.

“You have to consider that if we do not allow these opportunities to
continue, we will have patients that will no longer have an option for
their stress or the sleep issues they might experience,” Williams said.

Wesley Bryant, owner of 420 Craft Beverage in Cleveland, said he supports
regulation, testing, age-gating products, and having a proper licensing
framework. His business employs 20 people.

“That’s 20 families that I employ,” he said. “What am I supposed to do on
March 19, when I have to look at these 20 families and tell them, you can
no longer work here, not because we failed as a business, but because the
government failed us.”

On the federal level, Congress voted in November to ban products that
contain 0.4 milligrams of total THC per container when they voted to reopen
the government.

Previously, the 2018 Farm Bill said hemp can be grown legally if it
contains less than 0.3 percent THC.

There is a one-year implementation delay for the federal hemp ban, but
states can create their own regulatory framework before then.

“I actually do not see a ban coming in November,” Bryant said. “What I see
is a regulatory framework that’s been sorely missed from the jump start of
the farm bill, so I think that that is coming.”

Ohio Cannabis Coalition and Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like
Alcohol—the group behind Issue 2 on the 2023 ballot—oppose the attempted
referendum.

“I don’t want to bash my counterparts,” Bryant said when asked about opposition
from Ohio’s marijuana industry. “That’s not what I’m here to do. What I
will say is they have a limited license program. It is in their best
interest to abolish competition, and with S.B. 56, that’s what you have,
abolition of competition.”

The last referendum that passed in Ohio was when voters overturned an
anti-collective bargaining law in 2011.

*This story was first published by Ohio Capital Journal.*

The post Ohio Activists Launch Signature Drive For Referendum To Block
Marijuana And Hemp Restrictions appeared first on Marijuana Moment.