COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — There is a behind-the-scenes effort at the Ohio Statehouse right now to put a new marijuana law on the books.
“Some of these old convictions for marijuana, you know, let it go,” Representative Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) said.
No bill has been formally introduced. However, Seitz revealed he and Representatives Ismail Mohamed (D-Columbus) and Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) are working behind the scenes on legislation to expunge minor misdemeanor marijuana-related offenses.
“This legislation will be a historic one,” Mohamed said.
Mohamed said in Columbus alone, more than 3% of all residents have been charged with a misdemeanor for marijuana possession, and one in seven adult black men in the city have been charged with a misdemeanor marijuana offense.
“That impacts their employment opportunities,” he said. “It impacts housing and obviously higher education as well.”
Back in December, state senators passed an extensive marijuana bill that also included a provision for record expungement.
That bill has not moved forward and likely will not. Their expungement provision would create a “marijuana expungement fund,” creating a process for applicants of expungement to be reimbursed for the costs of the application and legal aid. Now, the state’s new recreational marijuana law legalizes and decriminalizes it, up to a certain possession amount. So, representatives said they are working on an in-depth bill to automatically expunge mostly fourth-degree misdemeanors and minor misdemeanor offenses that deal with possession, cultivation and trafficking of the drug, so long as it is currently legal.
“If it’s now legal to smoke it anywhere,” Seitz asked. “Then why are we holding it against people who smoked it 20 years ago?”
“Laws have changed over time and I think our sense of morality and what’s standard practice and expected does change over time,” Mohamed said.
Mohamed added that automatic expungement is important, because he said a lot of times Ohioans do not know they can, or do not know how to navigate the process.
“There are a lot of Ohioans, hundreds of thousands who are impacted by this, who don’t understand that they can apply to have it expunged,” he said.
Several parts of the bill are still being negotiated. For example, Seitz said they are negotiating how many years back the state should look for automatic expungement.
“In order to minimize the burden of that, we are looking at a loopback period starting in the year 2000,” Seitz said.
Mohamed said they are talking with stakeholders to ensure the legislation is both feasible and makes it across the finish line. As of Friday — similar to uncertainty over when the state will get its first legal vendor of recreational marijuana — there is no timeline for when the bill will be introduced, or whether it will be amended into another piece of legislation.
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