Ohio Republican politicians are offering new proposals to change Ohio’s recreational marijuana law enacted by voters in 2023. Their plans would alter many parts of the law—approved by 57 percent of voters that November—and range from lowering potency levels to reducing the legal number of homegrown plants, dictating where marijuana can be legally consumed, and whether it can be shared between adults.
Lawmakers’ efforts to redirect newly collected tax dollars from marijuana sales are drawing the most attention. The ballot language of Issue 2 specified that Ohio would establish a 10 percent excise tax on recreational marijuana sales and then divvy up those revenues this way: 36 percent to a Cannabis Social Equity and Jobs Fund, 36 percent to a Host Community Cannabis Fund, 25 percent to a Substance Abuse and Addiction Fund, and 3 percent to a Division of Cannabis Control and Tax Commissioner Fund.
Ohio voters passed Issue 2 as a legislative statute, providing elected officials the collective power to change it. Three proposals currently are on the table.
Gov. Mike DeWine’s biennial budget proposal for 2026 and 2027 proposes doubling the recreational marijuana excise tax to 20 percent and reallocating all taxes to projects that include a program for Ohioans to expunge past marijuana possession charges, operating funds for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, law enforcement training, and jail and law enforcement facility construction projects.
Senate Bill 56 is a 152-page bill passed in the Ohio Senate in late February that would overhaul the current marijuana law. The bill cuts household grow limits from 12 to six plants and bans smoking marijuana outdoors. Initially, the bill proposed raising the excise tax to 15 percent and rerouting the dollars, but all tax-related changes were removed before it passed.
Finally, the Ohio House of Representatives last month began to consider House Bill 160, a 120-page bill that would revise a variety of state liquor control, hemp, and adult-use marijuana laws and has been received as a less dramatic departure from the law approved by voters. The excise tax is kept at 10 percent but alters pathways for tax revenue, eliminating the Social Equity and Jobs Fund and reducing the Host Community Fund to 20 percent for just a five-year period beginning in 2026. Remaining tax revenue would be allocated to the General Fund.
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