COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohioans have begun casting their ballots on State Issue 2. However, as voters across the state weigh-in on whether to legalize recreational marijuana there could be an impact on the medicinal marijuana business in Ohio.
For the last seven years, medical marijuana has been legal in Ohio. Ever since the first dispensary opened in 2019, the Ohio Department of Commerce said nearly $1.5 billion worth of marijuana has been sold.
What You Need To Know
- The passage of State Issue 2 could impact the way medical marijuana is sold in Ohio
- If recreational marijuana becomes legal the cultivators who run medical marijuana dispensaries will be the first to have the opportunity to add recreational dispensaries
- The cultivators could operate those dispensaries under different licenses
If voters pass State Issue 2, it could impact the way dispensaries operate.
"The dispensaries are the only place where a patient or consumer can go into and purchase a medical marijuana product," said Lloyd Pierre-Louis, an Attorney with Dickinson Wright.
At the moment, about 35 cultivators operate just over 100 dispensaries across the state. If recreational marijuana becomes legal, those cultivators will be the first to have the opportunity to add recreational dispensaries. They would operate them under different licenses, and potentially tax the marijuana at different rates.
"So I think there's still going to be a demand," Pierre-Louis said, "What that demand will be, I don't know. But that's a it's a valid question. And I suspect it will continue to thrive."
In Michigan, many cultivators decided to forgo their medical marijuana business and only operate recreational marijuana dispensaries. But, they are giving discounts to customers who come in with a patient ID cards to offset an extra 10 percent tax that's being added to recreational marijuans sales.
If Ohio follows suit, it would give marijuana buyers a an incentive to do it for a medical reason, as oppose to just recreationally. But that's sometimes easier said than done.
"It's a very heavily regulated market," said Jana Hrdinová, Administrative Director, Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at Ohio State University. "Dispensaries specifically have very extensive regulations that dictate who they can sell to under what conditions, you know, who can even walk into the dispensary and so on and so forth."
Meanwhile, most companies do not cover insurance when it comes to medicinal marijuana, and that premise most likely will not change.
"Anything cannabis-related is to a very limited degree," Pierre-Louis said. " It's not approved by the FDA so that makes it a little bit more difficult for people to access medical cannabis since they essentially are paying out of pocket."
What’s unknown at this point in time is if the legalization of recreational marijuana could impact the Regulatory Board's likeliness of expanding the list of conditions that make someone eligible to get medical marijuana.