4 Reasons Pot Legalization Crashed and Burned in Ohio

The Buckeye State legalization initiative got trounced Tuesday, and there are lessons to be learned.

Issue 3, the ResponsibleOhio marijuana legalization initiative, was trounced at the polls Tuesday, losing by a 2-to-1 margin despite polling that showed a competitive race and a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that went largely unanswered.

The defeat came even as voters, both in Ohio and nationwide, voice their support for pot legalization. Last month, a Quinnipiac poll had Ohio support for generic legalization at 53%, while a Gallup poll had national support for legalization at 58%.

So what went wrong? It's pretty early to fully dissect voting patterns, but here are four contributing factors to the defeat:

1. It's a marijuana monopoly! The ResponsibleOhio initiative would have created a "monopoly" on commercial pot cultivation by allowing only 10 such grows and assigning them to people who invested in the campaign. It was an interesting initiative business model and worked well enough to actually make the ballot, which no other marijuana reform initiatives in the state have managed to do, but turned out to be self-defeating in the end. The model left the initiative open to charges of "crony capitalism" and creating a "legal marijuana cartel," and really stuck in the craw of even many Buckeye legalization supporters, some of whom publicly and virulently opposed it.

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