Will Ohio legalize marijuana this year?

COLUMBUS – The race to make Ohio the fifth state to legalize marijuana starts this week, as activists seek the Midwestern, swing-state win that would cement their momentum nationwide.

The bipartisan Ohio Ballot Board on Friday approved a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would

• allow pot use by adults over the age of 21,

• legalize medical marijuana for minors, with parental consent,

• limit the commercial growth of marijuana to 10 sites owned by the investors that are paying for the ballot campaign. Adults over the age of 21 would be able to obtain a license to grow up to four marijuana plants for their personal use, but not for sale.

Now, supporters must gather nearly 306,000 signatures by July to reach their goal of qualifying for the November 2015 ballot – a target well within reach for the wealthy investors and the experienced campaign team they're paying to gather the signatures and market the measure.

Still, the proposed amendment, with its limit on commercial growers, faces opposition from some of Ohio's longtime marijuana proponents. They're pushing alternate measures.

"Those people … have invested their lives and taken great risks to get us to where we are today," said Keith Stroup, an attorney with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "We would like the market to be open to small- and mid-sized growers, not just the big guys."

Even so, NORML will likely support the measure if it qualifies for the ballot, he said.

"If we could legalize marijuana in Ohio, it opens up a whole section of the country that's generally considered not favorable to legalization," Stroup said. "It would demonstrate that we could legalize marijuana in any state where we had an organized and well-funded campaign."

$20 million – & exclusive pot-growing rights

ResponsibleOhio, the group behind the latest ballot initiative, is seeking to pioneer a model for financing a marijuana-legalization campaign.

In other states, grassroots pot supporters have banded together, with the financial support of a national marijuana group, to gather signatures and pay for a ballot campaign. But in Ohio, an investor group led by Cincinnati sports agent James Gould is putting up about $20 million to finance the effort itself.

The catch? The amendment would give those investors exclusive rights to profiting from the growth of cannabis in Ohio.

The group is putting another $20 million into developing 10 marijuana farms across the state – anchoring the effort in Southwest Ohio, with three farms in Greater Cincinnati and one just north in Montgomery. The exclusive growing market has been called everything from a "monopoly" to a "cartel" by anti-marijuana politicians and traditional marijuana supporters alike.

"We sort of hate to see them come in and get rich on the hard work we've done over the decades," said Stroup, of NORML.

Still, none of the Ohio groups that have supported legalizing medical marijuana have had enough money or organizational prowess to put an amendment on the ballot so far. Three other weed-related amendments have received state approval to gather signatures since 2011. But without money for a petition campaign, supporters have been unable to qualify for the ballot, much less to pay for a campaign to turn out voters.

ResponsibleOhio's "oligopoly" proposal has awakened marijuana supporters this year, said John Pardee, who hopes to put a medical marijuana amendment on the November ballot as a competing option.

"I honestly think they're in real trouble," he said. "We're going to be successful."

Still, Pardee's group has only gathered 150,000 signatures so far and has failed to attract national money to boost that effort.

"You're not going to get what you want if you don't start with money in the bank," said Chris Lindsey, a legislative analyst for the Marijuana Policy Project, which has financed some of the campaigns that have legalized recreational pot in four states and medical marijuana in 23 states and the District of Columbia.

Lindsey's group plans to support – but not finance – ResponsibleOhio's effort, even though Marijuana Policy Project would prefer proposal that didn't limit the growing process to 10 investor-backed farms.

"We definitely support replacing the status quo. Marijuana prohibition is a colossal failure, and it needs to go," Lindsey said.

Blue Ash's Rob Ryan, president of the Ohio chapter of NORML, said he'll support any efforts that move marijuana legalization forward.

"I think it's funny people want to oppose a plan that makes progress, (just) because of economics," Ryan said.

But can it pass this year?

If ResponsibleOhio succeeds in changing Ohio law, it will have taken advantage of a shift in public opinion that was already underway. Last year, a Quinnipiac University poll found 8-to-1 support for medical marijuana, including support from 78 percent of Republican respondents. A slim majority of Ohioans in the poll – 51 percent – even said they'd support allowing adults in Ohio to possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use

But national marijuana groups worry investors are targeting the wrong election. This fall's election lacks a major statewide or national race. Such an "off-off-year election" typically attracts an older, more conservative mix of voters than a presidential year such as 2016. That could skew the electorate toward people who would oppose marijuana legalization, some fear.

ResponsibleOhio's internal polling indicates it can win in 2015, even with a traditional off-off-year electorate, said campaign manager Ian James, who has led signature-gathering efforts such as the 2011 referendum to repeal the anti-union Senate Bill 5.

"The issue is finding the resonance with those voters," James said.

"When you talk with older voters and you talk about marijuana being able to treat Alzheimer's, arthritis, assisting the children who suffer from dozens of seizures a day, rather than ravaging their bodies with opiates … old, young, black, white, men, women come to the point of saying, 'I want to provide the compassionate care that this amendment provides. And I want to treat adults who are 21 and older as adults and allow them to purchase, possess and consume marijuana just the same way we do with alcohol."

Jon Allison, an attorney with the anti-marijuana Drug Free Action Alliance, said the investors behind the marijuana-legalization campaign are feigning interest in helping sick people.

"What they want to put in our state constitution is centered on a singular theme and desire, and it is purely and simply, greed," Allison said in a statement. "Ask the cartel investors if their hearts would be in this without a constitutionally guaranteed return on investment."

The proposed amendment would require marijuana growers, commercial processors and retail outlets to pay an extra 15 percent tax on their revenue. Consumers would pay an additional 5 percent tax when they purchase a joint or another cannabis product, potentially on top of the usual sales tax. Most of the revenue from the special tax would go to city, township and county governments to spend on police departments, firefighting and road and bridge repair.

ResponsibleOhio projects Ohioans would annually purchase more than $2.2 billion in legal marijuana by 2020, when the market has stabilized. That would be $271 for every resident older than 21 who could legally purchase it, according to a Gannett Ohio analysis.

But that figure may be on the high side. Consumers in Colorado purchased about $700 million in medical and retail marijuana in 2014, the first year it was legal. That amounted to $190 for every resident older than 21.

Ultimately, James said he thinks Ohio's traditional marijuana supporters will coalesce around ResponsibleOhio's ballot proposal. Once the amendment qualifies for the ballot, the wealthy investors plan to pay for another ballot campaign: a proposal to require the review and, possibly, expungement of criminal records related to past marijuana crimes.

In 2015, ResponsibleOhio's marijuana proposal "will be the only issue on the ballot and the only one that has the resources to win," James predicted. "To vote down the only possibility you have to legalize marijuana would be foolhardy."

Gannett Ohio reporters Benjamin Lanka and Jessie Balmert contributed.

Other options for legalizing?

Two other Ohio marijuana groups oppose the ResponsibleOhio amendment and are gathering signatures actively for their own legalization effort.

Ohio Cannabis Rights amendment

Website: OhioRightsGroup.org

Summary: Would allow for medical / "therapeutic" use of cannabis and industrial hemp. Would allow people to grow cannabis at home for personal therapeutic use. Commercial sales would be regulated.

Status: Cleared to gather signatures on May 23, 2013. Petition committee member John Pardee said his group has collected roughly 150,000 signatures. He hopes the amendment can make the ballot alongside ResponsibleOhio's measure, to give people a choice.

Opinion on ResponsibleOhio: Pardee said his effort is the "people's amendment," while ResponsibleOhio offers a "corporate amendment." He called the amendment a "very dangerous precedent."

End Ohio Cannabis Prohibition Act

Website: ResponsibleOhioans.org

Summary: Would allow for all adults 18 or older to use marijuana and to grow up to 24 plants for their personal use. Allows the Legislature to create a licensing process for commercial growers. No special taxes beyond standard sales tax.

Status: Rejected by Attorney General Mike DeWine last month; plan to tweak language and resubmit. "We've got volunteers coming in by the droves because of this ResponsibleOhio petition," said Tonya Davis, of Kettering, one of the group's leaders.

Opinion on ResponsibleOhio: "They only allow 10 (growers). That just drives me nuts. I think it's going to end up creating another class of criminal. They're just changing the means of prohibition. If you're going to legalize it, legalize it; don't monopolize it," Davis said. "These folks that are coming in know nothing about cannabis. They just have the money."

Chrissie Thompson and Benjamin Lanka