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Earlier this month, the good people of Ohio firmly gave the boot to a Republican-sponsored bill that would have made it far more difficult to amend the state constitution. That means that an amendment protecting abortion rights that’s on the ballot in November will only need a simple majority to pass, instead of the 60 percent majority the failed Measure 1 would have required.
And now that abortion amendment will have some company, in the form of a voter initiative to legalize recreational weed in Ohio. That one’s only a law, so it wouldn’t have been subject to the higher voting threshold even if Measure 1 had passed. Still, we celebrate the both of them, since it means voters will have an easier time gettin’ high and abortin’ babbies, possibly during drag shows for all we know.
Supporters of the weednitiative learned yesterday that in a second round of petition-gathering, they had finally gotten enough valid signatures to get the measure on the ballot, as Cincinnati’s WCPO-TV reports.
The group behind the initiative, the soberly named Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, initially submitted more than 222,000 petition signatures in July, which seemed to be about 100,000 more than needed. But once the signatures were checked, it turned out only 123,367 were valid — just 679 short of the goal to make it onto the ballot. WCPO didn’t explain why so many invalid signatures were included, so obviously you should make your own jokes about how too many hippies were potted up on locoweed, and signed the names of their guitars and VW vans too (high-pitched giggle).
Happily, Ohio’s voter initiative law — written before the current gerrymandered GOP majority got its grubby antidemocratic hands on things — allows for a period to “cure” insufficient petitions by allotting 10 extra days to gather more signatures. And gather signatures the Merry Weedlords did, delivering 10 times the number of signatures they’d been short. That way, even with a whole bunch of signatures from “Tom Bombadil” and “Fat Freddy’s Cat,” there were plenty enough valid signatures in the second tranche to get the measure on the ballot. Righteous, dude.
Incidentally, Measure 1 would have eliminated that cure period for signature drives to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot, but would have left it in place for laws. Until Republicans decided that passing laws shouldn’t be left up to the people either.
CNN ‘splains that if the measure passes (to the left, as is traditional), it would revise Ohio’s existing marywanna law to
allow adults to possess up to 2.5 ounces of most forms of marijuana and would establish a 10% sales tax on its purchase.
The proposal also aims to establish a division within the state’s Department of Commerce that would oversee licensing for marijuana facilities and would direct the Department of Development to study whether previous marijuana laws disproportionately impacted certain communities.
Individuals would be allowed to grow up to six plants for their own use, with a per-household cap of 12 plants, yes even if there are three of you fabulous furry freaks crashing together, man. Dang, remember when your motto used to be “Dope will you get you through times of no cash better than cash will get you through times of no dope”? The latter is just a scary story stoners tell in the dark these days.
If the initiative is approved by voters, activists estimate the 10 percent tax would raise between $350 to $400 million a year in new revenue, which we assume Republican state legislators will appropriate to hire narcs.
Given the number of very pissed off women and liberals who are likely to show up to pass the reproductive health amendment — whose backers gathered more than 700,000 signatures and made the ballot on the first try — we tend to be optimistic about the chances of both measures passing, even as we’ll keep urging Ohio voters to assume they’re outnumbered and need every last vote in November.
[WCPO / ABC News / CNN / Image created using multiple runs of DreamStudio AI and Photoshop]
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