Ohio’s pot vote failed for unique reason

For years, Americans’ support for legalizing marijuana has been growing. Pollsters have felt the momentum. Solid majorities now respond that they want legal weed.

So what happened in Ohio on Tuesday, when residents voted 64% to 36% against a well-funded marijuana initiative to legalize recreational and medicinal marijuana, handing a highprofile defeat to the burgeoning legalization movement?

The answer is pretty simple, if you ask some marijuana supporters who opposed the measure: The small group of investors who drafted and promoted the initiative blew it by designing the law so that they would be the only commercial growers allowed in the state.

Opponents, and even some legalization proponents, called the investors monopolists. Or as Tom Angell of the Marijuana Majority called them on Twitter, “You idiots,” also tweeting the hashtag #HowNotToLegalizeMarijuana.

Election losses can be bitter affairs among activists with competing visions, given how victories can trigger wide change while defeats can set back a cause.

Marijuana advocates across the country were closely watching the contro versial Ohio effort as a crucial election year for marijuana looms in 2016. Voters in California, Massachusetts, Arizona, Nevada and Maine are expected to vote on legalization on the same ballot they’ll use to vote for the next president, according to the Marijuana Policy Project.

“Polls show a strong and growing majority of Americans think marijuana should be legal for adults,” the policy project’s spokesman, Mason Tvert, said in a statement Tuesday night. “There is a lot of momentum building behind the movement to end marijuana prohibition heading into 2016.”

Tvert added, “It’s pretty obvious that the outcome in Ohio does not reflect where the nation stands or the direction in which it is heading when it comes to marijuana policy.”

None of those measures closely resembles the defeated Ohio initiative, which was designed for its backers’ own profit.

The investor group drafted the initiative so that only 10 preselected lots of land in Ohio could be used to grow commercial marijuana. Those lots were already owned by the investors.

“I am going to profit from this,” Ian James, the political consultant behind the measure, acknowledged to the Center for Public Integrity in June.

A small group of investors signed up with James’ Responsible-Ohio, which promised a $1-billion wholesale marijuana market in a prospectus obtained by the center.

But the financial structure of the measure made many legalization supporters uncomfortable and proved an easy target for opponents.

State politicians turned against the measure and presented voters with an “anti-monopoly” initiative designed to nullify the measure and ban special-interest groups from creating constitutional amendments for financial gain. That initiative won 52% to 48%.