Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost set the record straight Tuesday: “The Ohio legislature did not legalize marijuana for recreational purposes” when it legalized hemp last month.
The statement came at a news conference in the Statehouse Tuesday, where Mr. Yost said he wanted “to make clear” that weed remains illegal in the state to all who do not possess a medical marijuana license. He also stressed that drug charges can still move forward, despite his recent calls to temporarily “suspend” testing and prosecutions until proper technology is in place to distinguish marijuana from legal hemp.
The confusion comes after the recent passing of Senate Bill 57, which changed the definition of hemp to include any cannabis products with 0.3 percent THC or less. The legal threshold means agencies must now quantify the amount of THC in each sample of suspected marijuana in order to prosecute offenders.
The problem: The Ohio Criminal Bureau of Investigation’s lab, where law enforcement sends samples to be tested, doesn’t yet have the capability to do so.
As a result, testing, prosecutions and, by association, arrests have largely been stayed.
Mr. Yost dismissed the claim and offered a workaround until technology catches up with the law. His office “scrounged together” $50,000 to create the Major Marijuana Trafficking Grant program, which will pay for law enforcement agencies to send their samples to private labs which can quantify THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana that gets you high.
The program is meant for agencies needing to test large amounts of suspected weed that could result in felony charges and prison terms.
“Marijuana traffickers are not welcome in Ohio, and we’re going to support local jurisdictions in prosecuting them and enforcing the law,” Mr. Yost said.
BCI labs in Richfield and London, Ohio, have received the equipment needed to begin quantifying THC, and a third machine will be sent to the BCI lab in Bowling Green, but they won’t be running until the beginning of 2020, Mr. Yost said.
In the meantime, the attorney general’s office recommends law enforcement either send samples for testing to one of 18 accredited private labs in the United States that can quantify THC — the closest being Fouser Environmental Services, Ltd., a lab in Versailles, Ky., and Alliance Analytical Laboratories, Inc., in Coopersville, Mich. — or wait until testing is available in-state.
Most agencies, including the Toledo Police Department, seem to be waiting, which Mr. Yost said will not affect arrests and convictions. But he cleared the haze on another common misconception: that offenders could languish in jail for months waiting for a bud to be tested.
That’s not happening, he said. Possession of less than 100 grams of marijuana — which he described as “enough [marijuana] with current potency levels for you to get high every day for a month” — is punishable by a $150 fine, not jail time.
“I’m not encouraging people to [possess marijuana], but the notion that we have people in jail because they had one marijuana cigarette in their pocket, they had a joint in their pocket when they got stopped for a traffic citation, just isn’t true,” Mr. Yost said. “The real issue is not the guy that’s got a little baggie in the dashboard of his car or in the stash box at home. The real problem is the traffickers, the people that are bringing marijuana illegally and in large quantities into our communities and for that, I’m here today to announce a stopgap.”
First Published August 13, 2019, 9:01 p.m.
