Marijuana Moment
Ohio’s Republican governor is pushing to reallocate revenue generated from marijuana taxes to support police training, local jails and behavioral health services.
In an interview with Spectrum News 1 that aired on Sunday, Gov. Mike DeWine (R) was asked about what reforms he’d like to see to the voter-approved cannabis legalization law. And he said funding police training was a top priority, even if that wasn’t included in what voters passed in 2023.
“First of all, we respect the voters. With a pretty big margin, they said that marijuana should be legal in the state of Ohio,” he said, adding a word of “caution” to parents that THC potency is “much higher” in today’s products, which he called a “big issue.”
Part of the concern, he claimed, is that frequent cannabis use “does to reduce your IQ three to seven points.”
As far as changing the law, as the legislature has continued to debate since the ballot initiative passed, DeWine said he’s working with lawmakers “to come up with actually how the money would be spent that comes in from the tax that is on the marijuana—and one of the things that I would like to see is for some of that money to go to police training.”
“Every time we see some tragedy that occurs in regard to confrontation between the police and a citizen, the issues are raised, ‘Did the police officer do what they should have done?’” he said. “Police have a very, very, very difficult job. They’re making literally split-second decisions, and the best way to give them, really, the resources they need is training.”
He specifically talked about creating “scenario-based training centers around the state of Ohio,” where police would play out various scenarios to inform how they’d respond in real-life law enforcement situations.
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