Lake County Sentinel
Ohio voters pass Issues 2, Marijuana now legal
BY JOEY SCHNEIDER
STAFF
If you went to your polling place to vote in Ohio on Tuesday, the two biggest is-sues were issue 1 which was to amend the state's constitution protecting abor-tions and issue 2 which was to legalize the use of recreational marijuana. Both issues passed.
Ohio is the 24th state to allow people to use cannabis for non-medical reasons. The law will allow adults 21 and over to purchase and possess up to 2.5 ounces and also grow their own cannabis at home. A 10 percent tax will be in place on any purchase.
Just like issue 1, there were many for and against the legalization of marijuana both in advocacy groups and politicians in local, state, and federal levels. While Senators Sherrod Brown- D and JD Vance- R, were fairly silent on the issue. Senator Brown said last week during early voting that both he and his wife voted yes on issue 2 (he also said they voted yes on issue 1).
As of 10:53 PM. Ohio voters had passed the issue with 56.3 percent voting yes and 43.7 percent voting no. Lake County specifically voted 59 to 41 percent in favor of passing the issue.
The Ohio State University did a research study that concluded that the legal rec-reational marijuana market could generate between $276 million and $403 million in annual tax revenue to the state by the fifth full year of legalization. However, many share the assumptions that the numbers are never as big as they are sup-posed to be, and the problems are bigger than they are supposed to be.
Medicinal marijuana manufacturers such as Cresco Labs say they are gearing up for sales as recreational use and it could mean big business for the state. The State's plan right now is to let existing operators increase their capacity to be able to launch the program more quickly, to get the product to market more quickly, it helps curb the illicit market and it helps generate more tax revenue to the state as fast as possible.
POSTED 11/07/2023 23:43
Related Stories
