Next month, Ohio will ban all intoxicating hemp, including hemp-infused THC and CBD beverages, if Senate Bill 56 goes into effect as scheduled.
Some Ohio-based hemp growers and businesses want to slow roll that, taking it directly before voters. Paid circulators have already hit the streets for the group Ohioans for Cannabis Choice, said Michael Arno, who heads the California-based firm Arno Petition Consultants.
March 19 is the deadline to stay the law. Before then, gatherers will have to collect more than 248,000 valid signatures, from at least 44 of the state’s 88 counties.
Organizers with Ohioans for Cannabis Choice say they are making the case that SB 56 will take away rights voters won in 2023 when they ratified Issue 2, which legalized, regulated and taxed recreational marijuana. “They get it really quickly, and they sign very easily,” Arno said in an interview Monday.
But the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, which wrote and led the effort behind Issue 2, is against the referendum—as is the industry trade association the Ohio Cannabis Coalition, or OHCANN. In an email statement last Tuesday, Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol called it an effort by “monied interests to confuse voters.”
Wesley Bryant, founder of the Cleveland-based 420 Craft Beverages, rebuffed that.
“It is in their best interest to abolish competition, and with SB 56, that’s what you have, an abolition of competition,” Bryant said during a Monday news conference at Jackie O’s on Fourth in downtown Columbus.
Joey Ellwood, a Tuscarawas hemp farmer, said he’s still getting ready to communicate with customers about the ban going into effect. “But we’re also all hands on deck with the actual referendum,” Ellwood said.
Gov. Mike DeWine said Thursday cannabis proponents should take the win they had in 2023.
“Instead of now going back and whining about something the legislature has done, which frankly I think is very consistent with what the average voter was thinking when they went into it earlier,” DeWine said.
Ohioans haven’t overturned a law via the ballot since 2011, when they voted to overturn Senate Bill 5, which limited collective bargaining by public sector unions.
