Ohio To Have $24M Medical Cannabis Research Facility, Artisanal Grows
This week, the International Cannabinoid Institute (ICI) held a press conference at the statehouse in Ohio to announce their commitment to building a $24 million state-of-the-art facility for the researching of medical cannabis.
The breakthrough was announced by Garrett Greenlee from the Institute and Dr. Sue Sisley MD, the United States’ only Food & Drug Administration-approved researcher for investigating the effects of medical cannabis for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress.
The Institute has chosen Ohio as a location specifically because of the constitutional protection the 2015 legalization initiative, Issue 3, provides to the grow site. “The research would be protected under the federal constitution,” Greenlee explained to me on The Russ Belville Show, referring to Dr. Sisley’s FDA approval and use of federal cannabis provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), “as well as the state constitution.”
Greenlee was initially leery of Issue 3’s plan of limiting all commercial growing to 13 million square feet on ten investor-owned lands. But after a careful reading of the Issue, Greenlee found that Issue 3 doesn’t limit growing to ten licenses, but rather, growing must occur on only ten properties. Nothing in Issue 3 prevents those property owners from subdividing their land in any way they choose. Greenlee used that knowledge to negotiate with the property owner in Licking County to lease 15 acres to the ICI for their research facility.
That’s not the only property where there may end up being multiple growers. I spoke with John Pardee of the Ohio Rights Group (ORG) this week. His non-profit organization has been fighting for medical marijuana legislation in Ohio for years. Last weekend the ORG voted to endorse Issue 3 after they have gained assurances from four of the ten property owners that they will be leasing small plots of their land to multiple small artisanal grows. The growers at those small sites, Pardee assured me, would retain their intellectual property rights over the genetics they produce.
Opponents of Issue 3 who previously told me they were against there being just ten grow licenses are now shifting the goalposts since it has been revealed there will be multiple grow businesses. Now the refrain is that those independent grow businesses leasing their land from the ten landowners will just be subsidizing the landowners. Well, yes, just as any business subsidizes their landlord or their mortgage lender.
Washington State limited their total statewide grow canopy to 2 million square feet. Growers there can’t have a farm any greater than 30,000 square feet. Growers in Colorado are limited to 10,200 plants. In both those states, hundreds of people with farming skills have become well-paid master growers and their assistants. Ohio is going to have 13 million square feet that need farmed and the rich investors aren’t getting their hands dirty. There will be numerous companies leasing land from these investors and thousands of skilled farm jobs created by those companies.
Ohio votes on marijuana legalization in 32 days.
