So far, no.
Yesterday, the voters of Ohio rejected a ballot measure that would amend the Ohio constitution to legalize marijuana.
What’s ironic about this is that many of the organizations who are working to legalize marijuana urged voters to reject the measure. And (even more ironically) I’m glad the measure failed.
Drugs are big business, so it is amazing that it took this long for business to realize that they could make a lot of money off of marijuana. But once they figured that out, they didn’t waste any time. The ballot measure in Ohio was a blatant greedy power grab.
The ballot measure would have authorized ten (and only ten) specific businesses to supply legal marijuana, and keep it illegal for anyone else to sell it. And how did the writers of this measure select those ten businesses? They were the businesses that contributed a bunch of money to get the ballot measure passed. If it had passed, those ten companies would have had a collective monopoly to make a great deal of money, likely forever.
It wasn’t that long ago that we had a similar oligopoly, selling another (even more addictive) drug, tobacco. We don’t need big business pushing drugs again.
