Ohio won't legalize cannabis this year

The One and Only an initiative offering Ohioans A proposal to hold a vote on the legalization of cannabis was rejected due to a lack of valid signatures.

Ohio Attorney General's Office official Dave Yost has declared that the petition received on March 17 proposing an amendment to the state constitution regarding cannabis had been rejected because it did not contain the minimum number of valid signatures required to be put before the voters.

The draft petition contained 1,248 signatures, but only 271 were valid, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. A minimum of 1,000 signatures was required for the initiative to move forward. The petition would then have had to collect approximately 443,000 valid signatures by July 1, 2020.

«Because your petition did not contain the verified signatures of at least 1,000 eligible voters, we must reject it,» Yost wrote to the petition committee.

The proposed amendment would have allowed Ohio residents aged 21 and older to possess, use, and grow cannabis. The current state law, passed in 2016, authorizes medical use only. Businesses could also have applied for licenses to grow, process, and distribute cannabis.

The proposed constitutional amendment also included provisions aimed at promoting social equity in the future industry.