Ohio NORML ousts leader for supporting ResponsibleOhio

One of Ohio’s oldest marijuana-legalization groups has kicked out its president for supporting the ResponsibleOhio effort to legalize marijuana in Ohio.

Rob Ryan of Blue Ash was removed in June as leader of the Ohio chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). The decision comes amid escalating tensions among Ohio’s marijuana activists over how to legalize. Ryan and others see ResponsibleOhio as an important step forward. Others see the well-financed effort as wealthy people manipulating the political system to cut out the little guy from what could be a billion-dollar industry in Ohio by 2020.

Twelve members of the Ohio NORML board of directors, most of them leaders of the nine regional chapters, voted to remove Ryan from the state presidency. A 21-item bill of particulars complained that Ryan has been mean to NORML members, especially those who do not share his support of ResponsibleOhio: “Rob Ryan has taken to attacking anyone that doesn’t agree with him.”

“Rob Ryan began going to the monthly meetings all over the state to push support for RO,” the complaint said. “If anyone had questions or didn’t like the language, he would become verbally abusive and argumentative. This continued for a couple of months, until he finally realized the membership wasn’t being receptive.”

New president: Bullying prompted Ryan’s removal

The board of directors chose longtime NORML officer Brandy Sheaffer as president of the Ohio chapter. Sheaffer declined requests for interviews about Ryan’s removal. She wrote in emails that Ryan’s support for ResponsibleOhio “absolutely had no bearing” on the board’s decision.

She said Ryan’s bullying and abuse of members pushed the board to remove Ryan: “Robert Ryan would still have been removed from Ohio NORML even if ResponsibleOhio never existed.”

Ryan, a former aerospace engineer who lives in Blue Ash, said his ouster had everything to do with his activism for ResponsibleOhio. He had been president of Ohio NORML for three years. The 400-member organization, formed in Ohio in 2002, is an independent affiliate of the national NORML group.

Ryan has been talking with ResponsibleOhio’s organizers since last year and since the spring has collected signatures to put the Marijuana Legalization Amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot.

Friday, he discussed the petition with customers at The Cream of Caffeine, a coffee shop in Deer Park.

“Everything boiled down to the fact that I’m abrasive. It’s true. I am. I’m an engineer,” Ryan said. “They just did not like that I was collecting signatures for ResponsibleOhio. But I was the president of a marijuana-legalization group. I believe in legalization. And ResponsibleOhio means legalization.”

Plan would limit crop to 10 farms around state

ResponsibleOhio is a group of more than 20 private investors, many of them Ohioans, who have put up $20 million for the campaign this year to amend the state’s constitution to set up a regulatory body to oversee marijuana legalization.

The most controversial component of the plan would limit the cultivation of the commercial crop to 10 farms around Ohio, the legal descriptions of which are written into the proposed constitutional amendment. The investors have already purchased or obtained options to purchase those properties.

Individual growers could buy $50 annual licenses from the state to raise four flowering plants at home.

Activists who have been pushing for legalization for years, even decades, oppose the ResponsibleOhio set-up as an un-American limitation on free enterprise. They prefer regimens like those adopted in Colorado and Oregon, where anyone can grow marijuana. Joining the activists in opposition to ResponsibleOhio are the Ohio Legislature and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.

Last month, lawmakers quickly wrote and passed a ballot initiative for November that would prohibit any “monopoly, oligopoly or cartel,” especially any that produce a federally prohibited drug. Last week, the 60,000-farmer federation announced that its board of directors opposed ResponsibleOhio as a distortion of the Ohio Constitution.

A perversion of NORML or not?

Aaron Weaver of Vermilion is president of Citizens Against ResponsibleOhio. He said Ryan’s support of the marijuana initiative was “a perversion of the NORML name” on behalf of ResponsibleOhio.

“ResponsibleOhio and the greed behind it has actually done a lot to expose the snakes who have been in the grass for quite some time now,” Weaver said.

But Keith Stroup, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who founded NORML in 1970, backed Ryan’s efforts. Stroup said while ResponsibleOhio does not have everything a marijuana activist could want, it is a form of legalization. Ryan, Stroup said, lost his post because he supported that form.

“At national NORML, we have always been about stopping the practice of treating responsible marijuana smokers as criminals and about establishing a legally regulated market where consumers can buy their marijuana in a safe and secure environment,” Stroup said. “For us, at the national level, if this initiative qualifies for the ballot, I think there is no doubt that we will support it, even though it’s not our favorite version of legalization.”

Five things to know about ResponsibleOhio this weekend:

• Petitioners will be out across the region collecting signatures from registered Ohio voters.

• The organization needs to turn in at least 29,509 more signatures to qualify for the Nov. 3 ballot.

• ResponsibleOhio has until Thursday, July 30, to turn in the signatures to the Ohio secretary of state.

• The magic number of registered voters’ signatures to make the ballot is 305,591.

• Opponents include marijuana-activist groups No to ResponsibleOhio and Citizens Against ResponsibleOhio and the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation.