One of the three people who plan to build a medical marijuana campus in Southwest Ohio thinks the drug can be used to treat one of the state’s biggest problems – opioid abuse.

Jimmy Gould, an investor who also served on the task force that developed Ohio’s medical marijuana law, thinks pot can be used to relieve symptoms of withdrawal from opioid use. Under Ohio’s new law, medical marijuana isn’t approved for that purpose.

Gould thinks it should be.

“What they are doing is they are introducing a drug that is a natural plant that will definitely deal with those symptoms," Gould says. "So one of the best things I can tell you is, assuming we are picked, we are going to go back in and ask for a condition for opiate withdrawal relief for those people who want to get off opioids.”

Gould says a research center is planned for the Wilmington campus he’s working on, with the plan to study different strains of marijuana as possible cures or treatments.

Ohio leads the nation in overdose deaths from opioids.