Pubdate: Wed, 04 Nov 2015
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2015 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Mark Peters

MEASURE TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA IN OHIO IS DEFEATED

Voters also pass a constitutional amendment that changes how state
legislative districts are redrawn

Ohio voters rejected a ballot measure Tuesday legalizing marijuana for
recreational and medical uses, dealing a blow to pot industry
investors looking to build on a series of ballot victories across the
country.

With 80% of precincts reporting, the measure trailed 65% to 35%,
according to the Associated Press.

On Tuesday'=C2=80=C2=99s ballot was a second constitutional amendment mak
ing it
illegal to use the state ballot measure process to establish a
monopoly. That measure was leading 53% to 48% with 80% of precincts
reporting. State officials had said the two measures would have been
in conflict because the marijuana amendment gives exclusive rights to
grow the drug to a small group of investors.

Voters in Ohio also Tuesday passed a constitutional amendment that
changes how state legislative districts are redrawn once a decade to
reduce partisan gerrymandering.

The Ohio marijuana measure has been controversial from the start, and
not just because it was trying to legalize marijuana in the Midwest.
Local investors in the pot industry were behind the ballot initiative,
spending more than $20 million to collect signatures to force a
statewide vote and then funding the campaign to win its passage.

The investors, who include NBA basketball legend Oscar Robertson and
former pop music star Nick Lachey, argued state marijuana laws were
failing Ohioans, leading to an array of problems from jail sentences
to a waste of government resources. They also said cities and towns
could reap hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenue from the
sale of the drug.

Marijuana remains illegal under federal law. But four states including
Colorado and Washington have legalized the drug for recreational use
in recent years through ballot measures. Many more states have
decriminalized small amounts of marijuana and allow its use for
medical reasons.

The vote in Ohio was complicated in recent months as lawmakers added
the anti-monopoly ballot measure, making the debate as much about the
drug as the industry it would create.

As it became clear the pot measure would make it onto the fall ballot,
the legislature moved to add the constitutional amendment dealing with
monopolies. Lawmakers argued that the citizen-initiative process
shouldn'=C2=80=C2=99t be used to set up such business monopolies.

Many elected officials, including Gov. John Kasich, and groups from
the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, lined up against the measure not just
because of how it setup the business, but because they saw legalizing
the drug as bad for public health and opening the door to drug use
among more young people
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