By Benjamin Davis / The Jambar
Before the new year, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 56 into law Dec. 19, 2025. Sponsored by Sen. Steve Huffman, the main purpose of SB 56 is to strengthen regulation on adult-use marijuana in Ohio.
Ohioans previously voted to legalize marijuana in 2023 through a citizen initiative.
Some of the bill’s provisions include setting a new limit on the number of dispensaries in Ohio, eliminating the sale of intoxicating hemp products and imposing buffer requirements, where dispensaries cannot be within a certain distance to schools or playgrounds.
Rep. David Thomas, Republican and a proponent of SB 56, said that the bill provides a framework to address possible ambiguities in the law.
“The citizen initiative obviously passed. It legalized marijuana, but there were a lot of issues with the actual legal language, and a lot of, I guess, ‘gray area’ with what the actual laws were,” Thomas said. “We were kind of the wild west when it came to marijuana and hemp.”
Thomas said he cares most about the provision that taxes from marijuana will go toward local administrations around the dispensary.
“The most important thing for me was now the tax on marijuana will be distributed to our local governments where there’s dispensaries,” Thomas said. “That could not happen prior to Senate Bill 56 because there was no actual mechanism in the law to disperse it.”
SB 56 was divisive within the state legislature due to some of its provisions. Thomas said the bill received a slim majority of votes from the 99 members of the Ohio House of Representatives.
“The bill only passed with 52 votes. The bill also passed at 2 a.m.,” Thomas said. “So, it took a lot that day of negotiating — back and forth to get it to a point where we can get a majority of the House to support [it].”
It was a similar situation in the Ohio Senate. According to Sen. Bill DeMora, Democrat, the bill passed entirely along party lines.
“It passed completely partisan in the Senate,” DeMora said.
Some of the bill’s measures provide the reason for this divide in the legislature. Opponents such as DeMora believe that the provisions are too restrictive.
“It recriminalized a bunch of different [things],” DeMora said. “It also outlawed any marijuana from another state coming in here. It [also] made it a crime to smoke marijuana anywhere … except in a private residence.”
DeMora also criticized what he believes to be an inconsistency in the bill regarding its provisions for growing marijuana at home and transporting marijuana in a car.
“If it’s not in its original, quote unquote, ‘packaging,’ you can’t transport it in a car,” DeMora said. “But if you home grow marijuana, which is legal, now I don’t know what [the] original packaging looks like.”
DeMora also argued that some of the provisions in the bill, relating to tax revenue, go against the will of the voters by contradicting parts of the 2023 initiative.
“64% of the money coming in from marijuana is going to the [state] general revenue fund,” DeMora said. “The people voted on having no money go to the general revenue fund [and instead] had money going to all kinds of things, like suicide hotlines … prevention hotlines and addiction hotlines.”
In terms of law enforcement, it is still too early to tell how the new law will be enforced, both at Youngstown State University and statewide. YSU Police Chief Shawn Varso said that question is left up to the Attorney General Dave Yost and local prosecutors.
“The prosecutors’ offices [and] the attorney general’s office are going to have to figure out how we’re actually going to prosecute this new law and how the police are going to act when it comes to enforcing the law,” Varso said. “Basically, we really don’t know yet how it’s going to affect law enforcement.”
SB 56 will go into effect March 19 of this year.
