The Court has denied a writ of mandamus which sought to compel the Hamilton County Board of Elections to place on the November ballot an initiative that would effectively decriminalize the use of marijuana--sorry, "marihuana"--in the City of Norwood, an enclave of Cincinnati.
The relators were "Sensible Norwood" and its principal, Amy Wolfinbarger. The ballot initiative had the requisite number of signatures, but the Board of Elections refused to place it on the ballot because it created new felony offenses (for possession of sufficiently large quantities of "marihuana" or hashish) and created administrative restrictions on how police officers would enforce existing drug laws. The Court ruled that neither of these things were properly the subject of a ballot initiative at the city level.
I generally support some decriminalization of marijuana possession, but this approach to it was doomed from the get-go.
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