Ohio’s leisurely trot toward legalized pot may not come as soon as some have wished.
The Ohio Attorney General’s office gave the OK last month for backers of the Ohio Alternative Treatment Amendment — who want to legalize pot for medicinal uses — to begin collecting the signatures needed to put it on the ballot. Exactly which ballot was unclear, though optimists were looking to 2012.
Now it appears such an amendment to Ohio’s constitution might not go before voters until 2014. The problem boils down to corralling free labor: The group will need to get about 385,000 valid signatures for the measure — and perhaps twice that number to offset mistakes and invalid signatures. Right now, the plan is to do it all with volunteers. So far, they’ve got 250 of them.
