At an elementary school in the northern Cincinnati suburb of West Chester, Beth Zielenski, said she voted no on the marijuana question. The Issue 3 initiative was supported and endorsed by political consultants, NORML, Ethan Nadelmann, the head of the Drug Policy Alliance, and the Marijuana Policy Project.
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Ohio Issue 3 has failed after voters in the state rejected a single proposal that would have legalized both medical and recreational marijuana on Tuesday.
A first-of-its-kind marijuana legalization proposal was nearing decision time in Ohio on Tuesday, even as the effort’s opponents were placing their hopes on a separate measure aimed at nullifying the plan.
Ohioans voted Tuesday regarding the legalization of marijuana in the state. Returns show the measure failing 65 percent to 35 percent.
“I can’t believe I voted “no” when it was finally on the ballot”.
State legislators seeking to derail Issue 3 had presented voters with an “anti-monopoly” initiative, Issue 2, designed to nullify the marijuana initiative and ban special-interest groups from creating constitutional amendments for financial gain. But if the state movement’s history of (lack) of success in Ohio is any indicator, Ohioans shouldn’t hold their breath.
State Representative Michael F. Curtin, a Democrat and former editor of The Columbus Dispatch, has called Issue 3 “a prostitution of the initiative process”, according to The New York Times.
Issue 3 would have allowed adults 21 and older to use, purchase or grow certain amounts of marijuana and allowed others to use it as medicine.
At least five other marijuana legalization measures are expected to appear on ballots across the country in 2016. “I think it’s ridiculous that marijuana is illegal”. About 26 percent of polling places reporting so far.
The results defied a few polls suggesting Issue 3 could pass. Those polls suggested marijuana legalization is more popular with younger voters, so Issue 3 supporters tried to play to that with the introduction of a mascot, Buddie, focused on college students.
“If we get a more conservative president in the fall of 2016, these state legalization issues might start getting shut down by the federal government”, Campos, an expert on the history of drug policy and a professor at the University of Cincinnati, told DW.
The executive director of the ReponsibleOhio campaign, Ian James, isn’t backing down either. If legalization does pass, it will surely come as a great victory to marijuana advocates who have been working for years to end prohibition in the state.
Opponents alleged that Issue 3 would have effectively set up a monopoly by limiting commercial marijuana growth to 10 preselected plots of land owned by the entrepreneurs behind the measure.
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“This bill keeps it monopolized between too many big companies though so I think I’m going to hold off another year before voting for it”.
