State Chamber Fighting Legal Pot

Cit­ing wor­ries over work­place safety, the Ohio Cham­ber of Com­merce on Wednes­day said that it will “strongly oppose” an effort to legal­ize mar­i­juana and will con­tribute $100,000 toward the effort to defeat it at the polls. The announce­ment comes after cham­ber mem­bers expressed their con­cerns about poten­tial acci­dents on the fac­tory floor and the abil­ity to hire peo­ple capa­ble of pass­ing a drug test. The cham­ber plans to spend $50,000 to con­vince vot­ers to approve a com­pet­ing amend­ment, which would pro­hibit the writ­ing of monop­o­lies into the state con­sti­tu­tion and could negate the mar­i­juana pro­posal and its plan to write 10 spe­cific, investor-run grow­ing facil­i­ties into the Ohio Constitution.