CLEVELAND — Thanks to the passage of Issue 2 last November, Ohio is now the 24th state to legalize marijuana for recreational and personal use.

What You Need To Know

  • Cannabis has been legalized in Ohio, but adults are currently unable to purchase from a dispensary

  • Many dispensaries around the state are ready for cannabis sales to begin but waiting for the green light

  • Some insiders believe sales could begin, "any day now"

Despite adults being able to legally grow and possess cannabis at home, there has been a lot of confusion and questions about when Ohioans will be able to buy cannabis from a dispensary, even from professionals within the industry.

Sage Graham, the general manager at Amplify Bedford, a cannabis dispensary in Northeast Ohio, said his team is ready for recreational sales to begin and they’ve nearly doubled their staff in preparation.

“We did our best to kind of predict what we are going to see,” Graham said. “So we tried to get a lot of good products for our future customers and patients and did our best to be ready when the switch flips.”

AJ Caraballo, the retail director for Amplify, said they have their provisional dual use license, meaning the state has received Amplify’s paperwork and there are some additional checks they must pass in order to get their final certificate of operation 

“You can almost think about it, like when you are building out a building and you have the permit to work inside the building and to do the things you need to do to get ready to open,” Caraballo explained. “But you need to get that certificate of occupancy inspection before you can open your doors for business, very similar type process.”

Caraballo said the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control, or the DCC, is currently in the process of reviewing applications and doing inspections.

“They [DCC] are making great strides and progress and getting that done,” he said. “I mean the statuary deadline is September, so to be sitting here in July and talking about we could get these inspections and it could be here in a couple of weeks, that’s extremely exciting and a testament to how hard they are working.”

He said when adults can buy cannabis at a store, there will be a 10% additional tax on recreational sales. 

“Well it’s really based off of supply and demand and we are launching an entirely new market, so there will be a surge in supply,” he said. “But we have been working on our end to make sure we’ve been stocking up to make sure we are not going to run out of product and do everything we can to make those prices reasonable.”

Graham said although they do expect an influx in customers when Ohioans can finally step into a dispensary for recreational purposes, they are trying to keep things as normal as possible for medical patients.

“Currently we are going to be prioritizing med patients, so med patients will be able to walk in and check in like normal,” Graham explained. “Non-medical sales, I imagine, we will have a line because of the influx of business we are going to see.”

Currently, no dispensaries in the state have their certificate of operations to sell recreationally.