Yes on Issue 2, legalizing recreational marijuana: endorsement editorial

There’s no question that State Issue 2, which seeks to legalize the adult use, purchase and growing of recreational marijuana in Ohio, has fed anxiety among many about its potential impacts on the workforce, driving safety and people’s health. Will the wide, legal availability of weed and of THC- and CBD-laced edibles push more young people to take harder drugs and imperil children who get their hands unwittingly on THC gummies?

Will police face quandaries when they stop motorists for suspected impaired driving, given that THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana, may be detected in the hair for months and in urine for days, well after its presumed psychoactive effects have waned? Will employers have to adjust drug-testing protocols and be more alert to possible tokers on the job?

These are all good questions that, parenthetically, underscore the need for the federal government to end marijuana criminalization so large health and policy studies can proceed. But they also rightly concern many in Ohio, including on our editorial board. As just one example, in other states that have legalized recreational marijuana, more kids have wound up in the emergency room after ingesting THC gummies.

But that’s also the point.

This is not terra incognita. Twenty-three other states, plus Washington, D.C., and Guam, have already legalized recreational marijuana without material overall impacts on their businesses and justice systems.

One possible reason: Legalization brings weed use out of the weeds, as it were, and into the sunlight, where it can be regulated and users can actually choose their preferred level of THC and CBD, allowing the self-restraint that many already exercise in drinking alcohol to more easily be applied to marijuana.

It’s no accident that the folks behind Issue 2 — a citizen-initiated state statute, not a constitutional amendment, meaning it can be amended (or killed) by the legislature — titled their initiative “Regulate marijuana like alcohol.” Ask a regular imbiber of alcohol, with its statistically negative impacts on health and driving safety, why legal booze is so much more benign than illegal marijuana, and they may wind up grasping for an argument.

Ohio has already legalized medical marijuana, and the state economy has not collapsed, and most of us remain more or less sober.

Recreational marijuana legalization allows more far-reaching marijuana regulation — and taxation. A recent Ohio State University study, based in part on the experiences in Michigan and Illinois, two nearby states that have legalized marijuana, projects state revenues the first year of full operation between $182 million and $218.4 million, rising to $336.4 million to $403.6 million by year five – followed by a drop-off.

Yes, part of that increased revenue could come at the expense of alcohol taxes that underwrite JobsOhio, the state’s quasi-private jobs agency. But legalization could also reroute illicit gains from today’s criminalized marijuana market into state coffers and redirect revenues from other states back to Ohio.

It’s also likely that full legalization in a state like Ohio with its major medical research institutions could help hone scientific understanding of THC and its medical and impaired-driving impacts, since even field sobriety tests are suspect when it comes to THC. In 2021, the National Institute of Justice warned that there was “little evidence correlating a specific THC level with impaired driving, making marijuana per se laws controversial and difficult to prosecute.”

Colorado, which in 2012 became one of the two first states, with Washington, to legalize recreational use, formed a “Cannabis Research & Policy Project” at the University of Colorado that regularly reports to the legislature.

A greater scientific understanding of cannabis impairment would also help allay concerns from employers. In Ohio, key business groups from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce to the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association oppose Issue 2, in part because of the unknowns about how to test for THC impairment.

Our editorial board, too, is divided on the implication of the current unknowns about how legalization will impact use and abuse. But there is no getting around the fact that many Ohioans illegally use recreational cannabis now, burdening the justice system, enriching drug dealers, and leaving unsuspecting users vulnerable to tainted weed laced with potentially lethal levels of fentanyl.

Legalizing recreational marijuana will make this market safer, better studied and with revenues benefiting oversight and research, not criminal enterprises. That is why a majority on our editorial board favors legalization. We urge Ohioans to vote “yes” on Issue 2 on the Nov. 7 ballot. Early voting has begun.

About our editorials: Editorials express the view of the editorial board of cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer — the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of the news organization.

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Other resources for voters:

League of Women Voters vote411.org voters’ guide.