Ohio to vote on legalized marijuana

 

 Photo by manish panghal on Unsplash

As Robert Anton Wilson was against the "war on some drugs," I should mention that Ohio, where I live and where RAW lived in the early 1960s, will vote Nov. 7 on whether to legalize possession and use of recreational marijuana for adults 21 and over. As with many other states, there would be licensed dispensaries, and an adult also would be allowed to grow up to six plants at home (12 if two adults lived at the residence) and to order home delivery.

If the state question passes, Ohio would, if I remember correctly, be the 24th state to fully legalize marijuana (as opposed to approving medical marijuana), although my former state, Oklahoma, has such a liberal medical marijuana law that the state  has legalization in effect in all but name. A new poll from Baldwin Wallace University in Berea (where I live), shows 57% of likely voters planning to vote for it. Another 58% favor another passage of another state question, which would put the right to abortion in the state constitution.

Interestingly, the marijuana question is an "initiated statute," i.e. a change in state law, not a change in the state constitution. That means that state lawmakers, in a legislature dominated by a large Republican majority, could tinker with the law or even repeal it. So if the question passes, we'll have to see what happens.

I have written a couple of newspaper stories which (I hope) go beyond the obvious in covering the marijuana state question. Michigan legalized marijuana a few years ago, and prices in the dispensaries have dropped sharply in recent years. I wrote a story on how Michigan towns with dispensaries near Ohio would face a sharp drop in sales if the question passed in Ohio. (I found one Michigan town, Morenci, right on the Ohio border with a population just above 2,000, which has no real grocery stores but which has five weed dispensaries.)

I also wrote a story about how Ohio has unregulated "diet marijuana," Delta 8 THC, available everywhere, even as state voters debate whether to authorize properly regulated marijuana. The latter story mentions Yellow Springs, Ohio, where RAW once lived and which is mentioned in Illuminatus!; it's also the hometown of Ohio's current governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who opposes legalization of marijuana.