Ohio’s GOP House speaker is changing his tune on the state’s marijuana law, appearing to walk back his previously stated plan to undermine provisions of the voter-approved initiative such as home cultivation rights.
Speaker Matt Huffman (R), who previously served as Senate president, said in a new interview with News 5 Cleveland that while he continues to oppose the reform measure voters passed last November, he doesn’t believe anyone in the legislature “realistically is suggesting that we’re going to repeal the legalization of marijuana.”
“I’m not for it. I wasn’t for the casinos coming to Ohio, either. But there’s lots of stuff that’s part of the Constitution and the law that are there that I don’t like,” he said.
To that end, Huffman indicated he’s no longer interested in pursuing plans to broadly undermine the cannabis law, despite having backed legislation as a Senate leader last session that would have decreased allowable THC levels in state-legal cannabis products, reduced the number of plants that adults could grow at home and increased costs for consumers at dispensaries.
Initially, changes backed by Huffman last year would have eliminated home cultivation rights entirely for Ohio adults and criminalized all cannabis obtained anywhere other than a state-licensed retailer.
“The amount of home growth that’s happening, of course, is far beyond the use for one or two people who may be growing it in their home,” Huffman said last month. “The only reason that someone would be growing that much is to resell it [and] likely would be part of supplying an illegal market.”
Weeks later, however, he said that he didn’t consider the home grow option “that a big deal in terms of this issue.”
Rep. Jamie Callender (R) said the speaker’s pivot is simply attributable to education on the issue, including in conversations they’ve had in recent weeks.
Callender, an advocate for reform who pushed back against Huffman’s earlier plan to impose additional limits on marijuana, said Huffman has “come a long way” on cannabis.
“He has put a lot of time and effort into learning the industry,” he said. “We’re not on exactly the same page, but I think we’re pretty close.”
“He has put the effort in to learn the industry and learn about it, which I don’t think he was happy about having to do,” Callender added. “But he has realized that, unlike the Senate, the House Republican caucus has a number of members who want to defer to the voters.”
Rather than pursue a dramatic upheaval of the state’s law, legislators are instead eyeing other more modest changes such as restricting the sale of hemp-derived intoxicating cannabinoids like delta-8 THC and increasing the THC limit for medical marijuana products to match adult-use cannabis.
Huffman was asked who might carry such a bill in the 2025 session and whether they should be the most experienced with THC. The speaker joked that whoever has such experience “will not be carrying the bill” because “there’s a lot of details,” playing into a stoner stereotype.
“It’s hard to remember,” he said.
Callender, whose name reporters floated as the most marijuana-aware member, responded by saying, “I do not believe I will be the one he has to carry the bill, which makes sense because we have not been exactly on the same page the whole time.”
“I think we need to all work together on one bill and work to make it the best we can,” he said.
Meanwhile, as 2024 came to a close with the new marijuana legalization law in effect, Ohio officials announced the state saw adult-use cannabis sales exceed. $242 million. Among the first buyers? None of than Callender himself.
As the 2025 session gets underway, lawmakers are expected to consider key changes to the state’s hemp laws. In November, legislators took testimony on a proposal that would ban intoxicating hemp products in the state. Sen. Steve Huffman (R) introduced that bill after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) called on lawmakers to regulate or ban delta-8 THC products.
Separately, despite legalization of adult-use cannabis in Ohio, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’s (VA) Cincinnati health center issued a reminder last summer that government doctors are still prohibited from recommending medical cannabis to veterans—at least as long as it remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law.
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The post Ohio GOP House Speaker Says Nobody Plans To Repeal Marijuana Legalization Law, While Backpedaling On Home Grow Opposition appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
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