Pot legalization debate blurs political lines

This year's campaign over Issue 3 in Ohio illustrates a counterintuitive political trend: Marijuana blurs partisan lines.

In general, Democrats support legalization and Republicans don't. But Issue 3, which would legalize marijuana by limiting the commercial crop to 10 farms, tends to draw people across party lines and all of the political spectrum:

•Most of the operatives pushing Issue 3 are Ohio Democratic political professionals such as Ian James, executive director of the private investor group ResponsibleOhio, and elections lawyer Don McTigue. But Democratic Rep. Mike Curtin, of Columbus, led the legislative push for Issue 2, a countering initiative on the Nov. 3 ballot, because he opposes putting what he calls a monopoly into the Ohio Constitution.

•Ohio Republicans, led by Gov. John Kasich, speak as one in opposition to Issue 3. Yet the author of the Marijuana Legalization Amendment, Cincinnati lawyer Chris Stock, calls himself an establishment Republican. Andy Douglas, a Republican who served on the Ohio Supreme Court for 17 years, gives legal counsel to ResponsibleOhio.

•Traditional movement activists, most of whom, it's fair to say, trend liberal, have tried for years to get Ohio politicians to address their issue. But many activists now urge a vote against Issue 3 because they dislike the economic model, which would cut nearly everyone out of the commercial cultivation and restrict home growers to four flowering plants.

Sri Kavuru is executive director of Ohioans to End Prohibition, which wants to put a different legalization initiative on next year's ballot. The overall shift in attitude about marijuana, he said, is not just political — it's social, and it's age-driven.

"The younger generation is overwhelmingly in favor of legalization, particularly for medical use," he said. "You actually see an older generation approving medical use but opposed to full legalization and recreational use. There is a growing social acceptance."

On the West Coast, marijuana has been an animating element in the political conversation for 40 years, even when not on the ballot. Yet the first state to legalize wasn't liberal California but more conservative Colorado.

This year, Ohio voters will express an electoral opinion about marijuana for the first time. The Ohio initiative, created byResponsibleOhio, is a proposed constitutional amendment. The most recent polling by Quinnipiac University, conducted in July before Issue 3 made the ballot, shows a slender 52 percent majority in Ohio for legalization.

"We're pretty almost fresh out of issues that scramble things up," said political scientist David Niven, at the University of Cincinnati. "In the 1970s, on almost any issue you could name — gay rights, civil rights — there was good deal of overlap. But we're in an era now where on any issue, no Democrat agrees with any Republican."

As a political issue, marijuana legalization appeals to libertarians, Niven and others said, because they see government overreach in personal behavior, such as drug use. In 2009 and 2011, legislation was introduced in Congress that would have repealed federal laws on marijuana: The sponsors were liberal Barney Frank of Massachusetts and libertarian Ron Paul of Texas. Yet the Libertarian Party of Ohio, while acknowledging that it supports legalization, opposes Issue 3 for its "crony-capitalist nature."

As legalization becomes a bigger factor in the political discussion, other fault lines appear. Niven and Doug Berman, of the Moritz School of Law at Ohio State University, said worries over spending billions of dollars more on the war on drugs generate tensions with concerns about children getting a hold of a joint.

Legalization "serves as an incredibly useful divining rod between fiscal conservatives and social conservatives," Berman said. "When you come to marijuana reform, it's hard for a fiscal conservative to say, yes, our money is being well used in this space. ... In some sense, a lot of it goes to: Do you trust big government in this arena?"

Complicating the Ohio discussion is Issue 3 itself. It does more than put legalization to a straight yes-or-no vote. The proposed constitutional amendment would limit cultivation of the commercial crop to 10 farms around Ohio, three of them in Hamilton, Butler and Clermont counties. Home growers can obtain a $50 annual permit to raise a crop of up to four flowering plants.

Stock, the amendment drafter, said conservative Ohio voters would not approve of a provision that allowed anyone to grow marijuana, as Colorado and Oregon permit. A limited operation, Stock said, could be more easily and better regulated.

But even supporters of legalization in the abstract come down against Issue 3 for allowing two dozen private investors on 10 farms to control the supply of Ohio-grown marijuana.

The term that will appear on the ballot, on both Issue 2 and Issue 3, is "monopoly" — which is not the correct economic term for the setup proposed in Issue 3. But "monopoly" is a familiar word to anyone who has played the board game or who knows about John D. Rockefeller and Standard Oil.

And that word adds a significant layer to ResponsibleOhio's political effort to lure legalization-friendly Republicans and traditional movement activists. Niven said the legislative initiative, Issue 2, forces ResponsibleOhio to fight a two-front war: to persuade voters to vote no on Issue 2 and yes on Issue 3.

"It's too easy to oppose," Niven said. "With this number of farms, it's an easy thing to demonize by saying you want to monopolize marijuana. So the opposition can be to the monopoly, not to the marijuana legalization. If you frame it as a marijuana monopoly, it's a real struggle to pass it."