"The State of Marijuana in The Buckeye State and Fiscal Policy Considerations of Legalized Recreational Marijuana"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper recently posted to SSRN authored by Finley Newman-James, who is a student at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.  This paper is the sixth of an on-going series of student papers supported by Drug Enforcement and Policy Center.  (The first five papers in this series are linked below.)  Here is this latest paper's abstract:

In 1975, Ohio’s 63rd Governor James A. Rhodes joined the growing trend of marijuana decriminalization by signing a bill passed by the legislature that supported amending the Ohio Revised Code to remove criminal penalties for use of marijuana.  This was the first big change to marijuana laws in Ohio.  Despite Ohio being one of the most conservative states in the country at the time, Rhodes brought Ohio to become the 6th state to relax punishments on marijuana use.  Since that time, a lot has changed regarding the status of cannabis in the Buckeye State.

This paper will first describe the past legal framework for marijuana along with current developments and proposed changes in the future, including a citizen’s ballot initiative that will appear on the November 2019 ballot that could potentially make sweeping changes to Ohio’s Constitution and marijuana law in Ohio.   This is then followed by an analysis of the potential benefits that recreational marijuana could have in respect to key fiscal budgetary issues facing the state of Ohio. 

Prior student papers in this series:

• "The Canna(business) of Higher Education"
• "Marijuana Banking in New York and Around the US: 'Swim at Your Own Risk'"
• "Intellectual Property Survey: Cannabis Plant Types, Methods of Extraction, IP Protection, and One Patent That Could Ruin It All"
• "Marijuana in the Workplace: Distinguishing Between On-Duty and Off-Duty Consumption"
• "An Argument Against Regulating Cannabis Like Alcohol"