Ohio Senate Panel Takes Up Bill To Amend Voter-Approved Marijuana Legalization Law, But Removes Its Tax Provisions

An Ohio Senate panel on Tuesday took testimony on a bill that would significantly amend the state’s voter-approved marijuana legalization law—including by halving the number of plants adults could grow, creating additional criminal offenses and eliminating certain social equity provisions.

Most testimony heard by the Senate General Government Committee—which is expected to vote on the proposal either this week or next—was in sharp opposition to the measure, SB 56, from Sen. Stephen Huffman (R).

“SB 56 is not the tidying-up of a citizen-initiated statute,” ACLU of Ohio said in written testimony. “Instead, it is a rebuke of the people and businesses that drafted the initiative, voted for it, worked tirelessly to implement it, and generated (so far) $319 million of adult-use sales.”

ACLU urged lawmakers not to rush the bill, writing: “Your constituents deserve the chance to fully weigh [in] on an important issue they passed so resoundingly before it is demolished by politicians.”

Of 43 pieces of written testimony submitted ahead of Tuesday’s hearing, only one was filed in support. A separate hearing on the measure last month, however, consisted mostly of testimony by proponents.

In its initial form, the 147-page bill would have raised the state’s excise tax on marijuana products from 10 percent to 15 percent and also changed how taxes are redistributed to local governments. But those tax provisions were removed under a substitute version of the measure approved by the committee at Tuesday’s hearing.

Another change in the substitute expands a buffer zone between marijuana retailers from half a mile to one full mile, which Chair Sen. Kristina Roegner (R) said was a request from both the state’s Division of Cannabis Control and existing businesses.

A committee vote on SB 56 was tentatively expected to happen as soon as this week, but Roegner said Tuesday that the panel would instead reconvene for further consideration of the measure sometime next week.

Under other, remaining provisions of Huffman’s bill, adults would be able to grow only up to six plants for personal use rather than the current 12. It would also decrease the THC content cap from 90 percent to 70 percent.

Further, the proposal would limit the number of dispensaries to 350, while requiring all licensed retailers to serve both adult-use consumers and medical cannabis patients. The state Division of Cannabis Control (DCC) would also no longer be required to establish rules allowing for marijuana deliveries and online purchases.

Cannabis reform advocates have blasted the measure as a rejection of the voters’ will.

“SB 56 would create a legal minefield that re-criminalizes innocuous conduct, including sharing cannabis, smoking or vaping in one’s backyard, and having edibles in a car that were ever opened,” wrote Marijuana Policy Project’s director of state policies, Karen O’Keefe, adding that the bill also “lowers potency caps, eliminates the cannabis social equity and jobs program, and eliminates non-discrimination protections to ensure responsible cannabis consumers are not denied child custody, medical care including life-saving organ transplants, and benefits.”

O’Keefe’s testimony called details of the proposal “needlessly onerous” and “nonsensical,” noting that a passenger on a boat who vapes or smokes marijuana would face a mandatory three-day minimum jail sentence that could extend as long as six months. And she pointed out that due to its proposed restrictions on sharing, “Spouses would need to have ‘his and her[s]’ cannabis! Imagine being prohibited from sharing a bottle of wine with friends and family.”

“The people spoke when they approved Issue 2,” O’Keefe said. “SB 56 dramatically scales back the freedoms, protections, and commitment to justice that voters approved. It replaces them with an air of suspicion, trip wires and re-criminalization.”

O’Keefe told Marijuana Moment in a separate email Tuesday that “SB 56 is a slap in the face to Ohio voters, 57% of whom approved legalization.”

“It dramatically scales back the freedoms, protections, and commitment to equity and justice that voters approved,” she said. “It replaces adult-use legalization with trip wires of re-criminalization, prohibiting everything from passing a joint to vaping on your own porch.”

Simon Dunkle IV, the executive director of Ohio NORML, told lawmakers that “you can’t correct what you don’t know about” and wrote that “as Elected Officials, you have a Duty to execute the Will of the People. You are Public Servants, not a Monarchy or Aristocracy.”

Testimony from some critics has already resulted in changes to the bill. Removing the bill’s previous changes to tax distributions, for instance, appear to be in response to outcry from local governments, who broadly opposed Huffman’s proposal as filed.

Kent Scarrett, executive director of the Ohio Municipal League, which represents more than 730 cities and villages, wrote in testimony for the hearing that while the group appreciates SB 56’s efforts to expand local government authority to ban or limit the number of cannabis businesses in a jurisdiction, municipalities are concerned by its proposed changes to revenue distribution. He called on lawmakers to reject the bill.

“We urge the Legislature to maintain funding for communities that host marijuana facilities,” he wrote, “so these municipalities can prioritize where the need is greatest in their community and work to make the greatest impact.”

The Ohio Mayors Alliance, which did not take a position on the measure, similarly pointed to concerns about the Host Community Fund, which collects 36 percent of state tax revenue from marijuana and routes it to local communities.

“To eliminate that revenue sharing fund with local communities that have acted in reliance on the existence of that fund would be fundamentally unfair,” the group said. “It would also ignore the very real needs of the extensive investments local taxpayers have made in their local police forces, particularly in light of their enhanced monitoring, training, and enforcement responsibilities with the creation of Ohio’s recreational

While the increased excise tax rate appears to have been removed in the latest version of SB 56, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has separately indicated plans to double the double the current tax rate via the budget process, raising it to 20 percent.

Sen. Bill DeMora (D) said during an earlier committee hearing late last month that the proposal effectively amounts to legislators telling voters: “Screw you, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You passed it with an overwhelming majority in the state, but we know better than they did what they were voting on.”

Huffman, the bill sponsor, said the legislation is not meant to “do away with the ballot initiative.”

“It’s to work around the edges to make it better,” he said.

Certain Democrats have so far indicated a willingness to finesse the cannabis law, but they’ve said Huffman’s proposed changes to provisions around issues such as home cultivation are a bridge too far.

Sen. Casey Weinstein (D), for example, has said there’s “definitely bipartisan support for protections in marketing to keep kids safe and sensible limitations on where you can use cannabis,” but not for undermining fundamental components of what voters approved.

The bill introduction comes as Ohio’s GOP House speaker seems to have changed his tune on the state’s marijuana law, walking back his previously stated plan to undermine provisions of the voter-approved initiative such as home cultivation rights.

Conflicts between Senate and House Republican leadership near the end of the last session played a key role in stalling amendment proposals. It’s unclear if the chambers will be able to reach consensus this round, especially as the market continues to evolve and consumers adopt to the law.

Speaker Matt Huffman (R), who previously served as Senate president, said that while he continues to oppose the reform measure voters passed, 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, the speaker 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 Matt 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.

While some Democratic lawmakers have previously indicated that they may be amenable to certain revisions, such as putting certain cannabis tax revenue toward K-12 education, other supporters of the voter-passed legalization initiative are firmly against letting legislators undermine the will of the majority that approved it.

NORML recently launched a letter-writing campaign urging Ohio residents to tell their state representatives to “keep your hands off Issue 2.”

“Even before the ink on the new law is dry, some lawmakers are calling on the legislature to amend or even repeal parts of the law. Prohibitionist groups are similarly encouraging lawmakers to take legislative action to thwart the will of the people,” NORML wrote. “We must not let these groups accomplish through backroom deals what they couldn’t accomplish at the ballot box. The will of the majority of Ohio’s voters must be respected.”

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.

As the 2025 session gets underway, lawmakers are also 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. Stephen Huffman, the sponsor of the marijuana revision bill, introduced that proposal 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.

GOP Congressman Files Bill To Let Military Veterans Get Medical Marijuana Recommendations From Government Doctors

Photo courtesy of Philip Steffan.

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