Analysis by Kyle A. Lohmeier
Despite the actions of Governor John Kasich and the Ohio congress, Ohioans will still have an opportunity to actually legalize marijuana via ballot initiative in 2017, according to Grassroots Ohioans, the organization working to put a “rights-first” initiative to amend the state constitution on the ballot next year.
“Grassroots Ohioans is moving forward with our amendment, targeting the 2017 ballot. We feel our initiative will complement the state’s bill by adding the individual right to use cannabis for medical purposes,” said the staff of Grassroots Ohioans in response to a question posed by The New Mercury.
Kasich quietly signed the worst medical marijuana bill ever written by human beings into law yesterday, and it doesn’t really legalize marijuana in any meaningful way. In fact, the only real effect of the law was to encourage the Marijuana Policy Project and their local affiliate Ohioans for Medical Marijuana to drop their proposed initiative for the 2016 general election ballot. Their initiative would have actually legalized marijuana, whereas this law signed by Kasich will bind medical marijuana up in a massive, cumbersome and imbecilic bureaucracy few doctors will ever bother to navigate.
As I said in the maiden voyage rant of this blog last month, the bill that Kasich signed yesterday is the sort of thing that can only come from government. Only government would “legalize” something by creating a new state bureaucracy to regulate the hell out of it. Only government would craft a medical marijuana law that specifically forbids patients from smoking marijuana. Only government could, while denouncing the monopolies a rival plan defeated by voters last year would have created, pass a medical marijuana law that guarantees a monopoly on production to those allowed to grow medical marijuana via one of the limited number of permits to be made available. Someday, that is. First, the governor has to appoint members to the Medical Marijuana Control Commission, because we need one of those.
The law is supposed to go into full effect 90 days after being signed, but even then Ohioans shouldn’t expect to see much of a difference in how medical marijuana is handled. The nuts-and-bolts of implementing the provisions of the law signed yesterday falls to the aforementioned Medical Marijuana Control Commission.
A representative from the Ohio State Boards and Commissions agency said the state was working on getting the commission seated, but couldn’t offer a timeline as to when that would be completed, and didn’t say whether the state expected the commission to be formed and ready to work when the law takes effect 89 days from now.
A call was placed to the Ohio State Medical Board seeking input on when that body would be ready to issue licenses to physicians to recommend marijuana to patients, but their main contact was out of the office as of press time and her assistant hadn’t returned a call seeking comment.
As I have not, at the time of this writing, received any solid answers as to what the state intends to do to implement the newly-signed law, all that follows here will be idle speculation, and much of it may be wrong. We’ll have to see.
However, I would be stunned if there is, 89 days from now, a state Medical Marijuana Control Commission in existence. I will be furthermore shocked if the Ohio State Medical Board is ready to and capable of issuing a permit to recommend medical marijuana to a doctor 89 days from now. I will be completely amazed if any doctors actually come forward seeking permission to be put under intense professional scrutiny while signing up for a boat-load of additional paperwork so as to participate in the “legalization” program set up by the state.
At any rate, the law is supposed to go into effect 90 days from the date it was signed, which, when I asked Siri was told would be September 6, 2016. Rest assured I will be following this boondoggle doggedly, and will bring you details as they become available.
And who knows? Maybe I’m dead wrong. Maybe there will be a massive uprising among Ohio doctors who clamor to be able to get a permit to be able to recommend marijuana to a patient, and then re-up that recommendation every 90 days while maintaining a detailed patient file as well as a separate file that tracks the progress made by all patients the doctor has recommended marijuana to, which is to be distilled into a report to be submitted annually. I mean, there might be a lot of doctors willing to go through that hassle, even without a leggy pharmaceutical company representative there to offer incentives for doing so. Perhaps prospective legal pot farmers should start investing in pens and clipboards with their farm’s name on them. They’ll need to do something to make going through the hassle of recommending their product instead of a dangerous opioid, for which there is no separate permitting process, seem reasonable.
Or, not. Maybe I’m just a jaundiced, jaded, cynical creep who always expects the worst out of people. Well, actually, there is no “maybe” about that. And, more often than not, my surprises, while few and far between, are pleasant ones.
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