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Talk show host Montel Williams supports Ohio Issue 3

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Talk show host Montel Williams supports Ohio Issue 3

COLUMBUS — Talk show host Montel Williams has used marijuana to battle symptoms of multiple sclerosis for 14 years, and today he urged Ohioans to pass Issue 3 on the Nov. 3 ballot despite its recreational pot component.

“Yeah, I had to weigh it,” he said. “But I also had to weigh that these people have been working for 20 years to get this done. … If this is the only thing that can get passed, I guarantee you the state can fix whatever component they need to fix. But we have to pass something so that we can get the patient off the battlefield.”

He plans to be back in Ohio to campaign for Issue 3 but stopped short of saying he will appear in ads to promote it.

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A recent Quinnipiac Poll had general support for medical marijuana at 90 percent of registered voters while general support for the legal use of a small amount of pot registered at 53 percent. A separate Akron Buckeye Poll released this week that asked specifically about Issue 3 had the question tied at 46 percent.

Pot for medical, recreational, and commercial purposes are tied together in Issue 3. TV ads financed by ResponsibleOhio have played up to its medical marijuana strengths.

Mr. Williams appeared at a news conference with a Cincinnati mother whose daughter suffers from severe seizures that, she said, have been successfully ameliorated in other children by the use of marijuana in other states like Colorado where it’s legal.

“I step outside this room with even a tenth of a gram, I can be arrested in this state…,” said Mr. Williams. He lives in New York but had been arrested twice in Michigan and Wisconsin for carrying a marijuana pipe. The charges were dropped both times.

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"There are people who just want to sell weed…, but there are people in this country who are seriously ill, sick beyond belief," he said. "We don’t have the nerve to step into the middle of a conversation with one of those people and their doctor on any other issue but this.”

He said marijuana helps to relieve his neuropathic pain and has stopped night spasms from multiple sclerosis.

Opponents of Issue 3, however, have argued that the big money appeal of recreational marijuana, not non-profit medical pot dispensaries, is the real force behind Issue 3, with the investors of what would be 10 constitutionally sanctioned growing facilities financing ResponsibleOhio’s campaign.

Opponents have also suggested that flaws with Issue 3 will not be easily fixed since its provisions would be carved into the state constitution and would not simply be a law that could be changed.

If approved, Issue 3 would legalize marijuana for medical and recreational purposes and would build a wholesale and retail infrastructure around the newly legal business. It would write the parcel numbers of 10 investor-run locations, including one on a North Toledo farm, into the Ohio Constitution.

It would establish a government commission to oversee the new industry and would set new taxes on marijuana and the food, oil, and other products made from it. It would also designate five facilities to test marijuana products for potency and safety, including one at an unidentified location in Wood County.

First Published October 21, 2015, 4:12 p.m.

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