Ohio GOP Lawmakers Can’t Agree On How To Amend Marijuana Law, Causing Planned Vote To Be Canceled

Despite efforts in the Ohio legislature to pass a bill to significantly
change the state’s voter-approved marijuana law, last-minute disagreements
between the House and Senate Republicans seemed to have derailed that plan
for now—with House lawmakers signaling that a deal won’t be struck before
the summer recess.

After taking public testimony and adopting certain changes to the
Senate-passed legislation, SB 56, in recent weeks, the House Judiciary
Committee ultimately declined to advance the proposal as scheduled at a
Wednesday hearing, making it so the measure couldn’t advance to a floor
vote planned for that day. Evidently, the revisions didn’t sit well with
key senators, according to several legislators.

“Apparently the Senate changed their mind,” Rep. Jamie Callender (R), a
pro-legalization lawmaker, told News 5 Cleveland.

Changes approved at a hearing late last month, for example, rolled back
some of the strict limits included in a version of the measure passed by
the Senate in February, including a criminal prohibition on sharing
marijuana between adults on private property.

“They wanted to make a mandatory jail sentence for passing a joint between
friends,” Callender, who has spent weeks working on additional changes to
the legislation, said. He also complained about the Senate’s proposal to
put all cannabis tax revenue in the state’s general fund, which would have
prevented local municipalities from getting a share of those dollars as is
currently the law.

“The Senate had proposed taking that tax away, and the House has fought
really hard to keep that in,” the lawmaker, who was one of the first people
to buy legal recreational marijuana products in Ohio when sales launched
last year, said. “We finally had that negotiated so it would stay in.”

In March, a survey of 38 municipalities by the Ohio State University’s
(OSU) Moritz College of Law found that local leaders were “unequivocally
opposed” to earlier proposals that would have stripped the planned funding.

While some have characterized the Senate’s pulled support as a spontaneous
wrinkle in an agreed-upon deal between the chambers, Senate President Rob
McColley (R) said “there was a misunderstanding as to where we might have
been on the bill as both chambers.”

House Speaker Matt Huffman (R), who formerly served as Senate president,
said he was “pretty disappointed” the Judiciary Committee wouldn’t be
taking up the legislation on Wednesday due to the other chamber’s
disagreement.

“To my surprise, there was a whole new set of issues, additional issues,
which were raised Monday night by the Senate regarding what we were trying
to do,” he said.

Where that leaves the legislation is yet to be seen. But while McColley
said he would still “like to get something done by the end of June” and
believed Huffman felt the same, the House speaker tempered those
expectations, saying he’s “not very optimistic” about that prospect.

“I just told my caucus: ‘We’re not going to just say OK because we’re so
anxious to pass the marijuana bill,’ which I’d like to get it done, but
we’re not going to give up House priorities to do that,” Huffman said.

“I thought we were on a path, this time last week, to pass it [this week].
That was the kind of clear indication we had,” Huffman said. However,
despite that clear indication, he also said “There was no agreement [with
the Senate] to pull out of.”

“We were hoping that there would be, anticipating there would be, sounded
like we might have—but it’s not correct to say that there was an agreement
that anybody pulled out of,” he said.

Sen. Steve Huffman (R), a relative of the speaker and main negotiator on
the Senate side of the marijuana debate, disagreed on that point.

“We were in an agreement,” he said. “I believe that things are still being
worked out, and I have the utmost confidence that we will resolve this by
next Wednesday.”

Callender said he doubted that, stating that he expected that the Senate
would continue to hold the line on attempts to revise the law in a way that
conflicts with the will of voters who approved legalization in 2023.


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Meanwhile in Ohio, adults are now able to buy more than double the amount
of marijuana than they were under previous limits, with state officials
determining that the market can sustainably supply both medical cannabis
patients and adult consumers.

A budget measure from Gov. Mike DeWine (R) is also a potential vehicle for
changes to the state’s marijuana law. As proposed, it would remove local
tax allocations of medical marijuana revenue and double the state cannabis
tax rate to 20 percent—though legislative leaders have said they will be
removing the tax increases.

Meanwhile, DeWine in March announced his desire to reallocate marijuana tax
revenue to support police training, local jails and behavioral health
services. He said funding police training was a top priority, even if that
wasn’t included in what voters passed in 2023.

Ohio’s Senate president has also pushed back against criticism of the
Senate bill, claiming the legislation does not disrespect the will of the
electorate and would have little impact on products available in stores.

Separately, lawmakers are considering legislation to restrict intoxicating
hemp products.

DeWine has repeatedly asked lawmakers to regulate or ban intoxicating hemp
products such as delta-8 THC.

California Is Using $30 Million In Marijuana Revenue To Support Research On
Consumer Preferences, Crop Yields And Sustainability



The post Ohio GOP Lawmakers Can’t Agree On How To Amend Marijuana Law,
Causing Planned Vote To Be Canceled appeared first on Marijuana Moment.