By most accounts, Ohio’s recreational marijuana law approved by 57% of the Ohio electorate as state Issue 2 in November 2023 has launched successfully.

Since the law took effect last August, marijuana dispensaries throughout the state have sold more than $300 million worth of adult-use cannabis, raising $30 million in new tax revenue in the process, a healthy chunk of which is flowing back to the communities where dispensaries are located.

But given the contentious aura that surrounds the very mention of cannabis, it should not be all that surprising that opponents in the Ohio General Assembly are doing their best to stomp all over the wishes of a majority of Ohio voters a short 15 months ago.

That movement has crystallized in the form of state Senate Bill 56, sponsored by Sen. Matt Huffman, R- Tipp City. If approved in the Legislature and signed by the governor, much of the Cannabis Control Law voters enacted would be repealed.

Among its replacement provisions, Huffman’s bill would:

● Enact a 50% increase on the excise tax on adult-use marijuana and redirect all tax revenue to the state’s general revenue fund.

● Reduce the maximum number of home-grown marijuana plants that may be cultivated at a single residence from 12 to six.

● Reduce allowable THC levels in adult-use marijuana extracts, from a maximum of 90% to a maximum of 70%

● Repeal provisions protecting adult-use consumers from certain adverse actions by employers, courts, health care providers and regulatory authorities.

In short, the legislation attempts to take a wrecking ball to a law that opponents consider too permissive. To be sure, a healthy minority of voters were troubled by the potential adverse impacts legalized recreational marijuana could usher into the Buckeye State. This newspaper, too, opposed state Issue 2 on the grounds of its potential threat to public health and safety.

Nonetheless, in a democratic republic, majority rules, and the minority should respect the wishes of the majority. In SB 56, Huffman and his supporters give short shrift to that hallowed principle.

Of its dozens of revisions from the original law, we particularly take issue with the wholesale theft of potential tax revenue from local communities that house dispensaries.

Take Austintown as a case in point.

The township initially opposed the new recreational marijuana law and instituted a temporary ban on dispensaries within the township, as several other Mahoning Valley communities have done. But after taking stock of the financial windfall the township could enjoy by receiving 35% of all tax revenue from cannabis sales, trustees authorized one and only dispensary to locate within its borders with potential benefits in the hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to township coffers.

As Austintown Trustee Robert Santos put it, “What’s frustrating is that when the residents went to the ballot box, it was there in the ballot language. They voted with the understanding that this money would be coming to local communities. To have it removed afterward is disenfranchising the voter, and it is un-American.”

For those reasons, Santos said the Mahoning County Townships Association, of which he is president, formally opposes SB 56 and urges residents to contact their state legislators to express their opposition as well.

But Huffman’s measure stands as not the only threat to local communities that welcome marijuana dispensaries.

Making matters worse is that Gov. Mike DeWine has joined in the shakedown of the citizen-approved marijuana initiative. The governor’s proposed 2026-27 state budget proposal announced two weeks ago also includes a plan to raise the tax on recreational cannabis to 20% from the 10% approved by voters in 2023 when they legalized the industry.

Moreover, the tax money would be distributed according to the menu originally proposed last session by the Ohio Senate on such things as jail improvements, law enforcement, poison control, assistance in having old cannabis-related convictions expunged and addiction services. The local share, as Santos points out, would be gutted.

We therefore encourage the Mahoning Valley’s delegation to the state Legislature to steer clear of any and all needless tinkering with Ohio’s marijuana statutes both in Senate Bill 56 and in the governor’s budget proposal. In so doing, they can ensure the will of the electorate will not be thwarted.