Thanks for nothing, Buddie: 4 reasons Ohio's marijuana legalization initiative failed

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Issue 3, the ResponsibleOhio marijuana legalization initiative, was trounced at the polls Tuesday, losing by a 2-to-1 margin despite polling that showed a competitive race and a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign that went largely unanswered.

The defeat came even as voters, both in Ohio and nationwide, voice their support for pot legalization. Last month, a Quinnipiac poll had Ohio support for generic legalization at 53 percent, while a Gallup poll had national support for legalization at 58 percent.

So what went wrong? It’s pretty early to fully dissect voting patterns, but here are four contributing factors to the defeat:

1. It’s a marijuana monopoly! The ResponsibleOhio initiative would have created a “monopoly” on commercial pot cultivation by allowing only 10 such grows and assigning them to people who invested in the campaign. It was an interesting initiative business model and worked well enough to actually make the ballot, which no other marijuana reform...

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