Worried about efforts to allow a small number of growers to sell legalized marijuana in Ohio, state Auditor Dave Yost is pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban ballot initiatives that create economic monopolies.
Speaking Thursday before some members of the Constitutional Modernization Commission, Yost offered draft language for an amendment he said would stop marijuana and casino “special interests” from using the ballot box to enrich themselves.
Under Yost’s proposal, groups could get an exemption to the ban, but only with two statewide votes: one to approve the exemption and a second to pass the measure itself.
The auditor urged that lawmakers hurry to place the measure on the ballot this fall, where it could appear alongside at least two separate ballot initiatives, each of which would establish a legal marijuana industry fueled by growing sites promised to campaign investors.
“Now is the time to nip this nonsense in the bud,” Yost said to a panel of the bipartisan commission, which is studying ways to improve Ohio’s Constitution. “Now that the trail has been blazed, others will surely follow.”
A spokeswoman for ResponsibleOhio, the group behind one of the two marijuana ballot measures, didn’t immediately return a phone call Thursday afternoon seeking comment.
If all three ballot initiatives pass this year, Yost said, his proposed amendment would nullify the two marijuana proposals if it receives more votes.
Yost said he hasn’t yet won a legislative “consensus” to place his amendment on the November ballot. And he doesn’t have much time to get one: he’ll need a three-fifths vote from the Ohio House and Senate before the end of June, when lawmakers leave for the summer.
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