The Ohio Senate passed Senate Bill 288 on Nov. 30 with a 27-2 vote. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Nathan Manning, spoke to the Senate about his goals for this 975-page measure. “We have done a lot of work on this bill. And, really, the goal of this—we talk about criminal justice reform, we talk about tough-on-crime, soft-on-crime—really what we want to do is improve our criminal justice system and lower crime in our society and make our society a safer place,” said Manning. “And to do that, we did a lot of work here.”

Manning explained that “a lot of this bill is long-term, making sure that people that have entered our judicial system exit the judicial system as better people, and to lower recidivism rates, to improve their quality of life and to make sure that we have less victims in the future.”

Among many proposed changes, SB-288 would consider possession of cannabis paraphernalia a minor misdemeanor. “Arrest or conviction for a minor misdemeanor violation of this section does not constitute a criminal record and need not be reported by the person so arrested or convicted in response to any inquiries about the person’s criminal record, including any inquiries contained in any application for employment, license, or other right or privilege, or made in connection with the person’s appearance as a witness,” the current bill text states.

Those who receive a cannabis paraphernalia possession conviction would be allowed to seal their record from the public after six months have passed, and records would be eligible to be expunged after three years. The current draft notes that the application fee would cost “not more than $50.”

SB-288 now heads to the House of Representatives for further consideration. The 134th congressional assembly will end on Dec. 21, and if the bill is not passed in the House and then signed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine then it will need to be reintroduced in the next legislative session.

Earlier this year in May, Ohio advocates decided to delay a ballot proposal for adult-use cannabis legalization to 2023. At the time, Republican state officials refused to consider the ballot proposal, so the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol sued them. The organization had already collected 140,000 signatures to qualify the measure for the ballot, but the lawsuit settlement will allow them to keep those signatures going into next year.

“We expect that we’ll be able to do it,” Attorney Tom Haren said about the adult-use cannabis effort. “We’ll have staff get ready. Our intention is to give Ohio voters an opportunity to weigh in if the General Assembly continues to ignore them.”

It’s been two years since Ohio legalized medical cannabis, and as of March 2022 the state has collected $725 million in sales revenue. The state allows resident patients to use medical cannabis as a treatment for 22 conditions, but this number may change if the general assembly passes a current proposal if “the patient’s symptoms may reasonably be expected to be relieved from medical marijuana.”

Recently, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear signed an executive order to allow medical cannabis if it has been purchased in a state that has legalized medical cannabis. Although Ohio borders Kentucky, patients would not be legally allowed to buy medical cannabis in Ohio because it only allows residents to purchase cannabis as medicine. Currently, this only leaves Illinois as an option, with Missouri and Virginia to possibly open up later on when their medical cannabis programs take effect.

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Earlier this month, three nonprofit organizations (the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, Nevada Legal Services, and Code for America) were granted a total of $1.2 million from cannabis tax revenue from the Clark County Commission. Code for America, which received $200,000 of this amount, has been tasked with investigating how to implement automatic record sealing in the state of Nevada.

According to The Nevada Independent, Assemblymember Venicia Considine, who is also the Director of Development at Legal Aid of Southern Nevada, explained how these convictions affect people later in life. “There was a woman who couldn’t go see her son graduate on an Air Force base because she had a felony record [for cannabis],” said Considine. “There’s a lot of people that live here in Las Vegas that couldn’t get jobs, simply because they had something on their record from a decade, two decades ago, that was eligible for record sealing, but there was no real way to get it done.”

Record sealing is often a lengthy process, which includes a number of steps, as well as funds, in order to achieve success. The Nevada Independent claims that less than 10% of eligible people who seek out this process actually get their records cleared.

Bay Area-based Code for America has nine months to recount what would be necessary to speed up this process. Many hope that it could bring positive attention back to Assembly Bill 192, also called the Nevada Second Chance Act, which was passed in 2019.

AB-192’s sponsor, former-Assemblymember William McCurdy II (who is now a Clark County Commissioner), explains one of the hangups of the bill. “I wanted [AB-192] to be an automatic seal, but that was impossible, because we currently still have records that are not digitized,” McCurdy said.

AB-192 has led to many useful workshops that have helped Nevadan residents clear their past cannabis convictions, but there are still many more people in need of assistance. “Having a record, especially under the previous laws, you could have had a felony…and have never trafficked or anything,” McCurdy said.

Prior to 2016 when voters legalized medical cannabis, violators of the law received a felony charge after three misdemeanor possession charges of less than one ounce of cannabis (or if they possessed more than one ounce on the first offense). After 2016, possession of more than one ounce is a misdemeanor, and felonies are received for illegal cannabis product selling.

McCurdy mentioned that harsh cannabis laws have caused Black offenders to receive more severe convictions. This is backed up by data collected by the American Civil Liberties Union, which shares that cannabis offenses between 2001-2018 report that Black people were arrested three times the rate of white people, and in some states, up to eight times as often.

“If you were someone [of color], back in the day, that had a drug addiction, and you were found to be in possession of that drug, most of the time you were sentenced with a felony,” McCurdy said. “That was the war on drugs.”

Considine adds that the record sealing process is difficult to manage for people trying to do it for themselves, and it’s a challenge even for legal professionals. “If you served your time and you’re [eligible for record sealing], why are you still paying a penalty for it, especially when people can [use cannabis] now and no one’s getting in trouble for it?” Considine said.

Code for America was instrumental in aiding the state of Utah to clear more than 500,000 records in February 2022. It has also helped out other states such as California and Oklahoma as well. Although the organization has been successful in the past, Code for America’s Associate Program Director Alia Toran-Burrell says that every state is different, and may require a different approach. Ultimately, an updated law can only do so much. “Legislation is needed because there’s no other real mechanism to enforce a state to do this at the state level,” Burrell said.

The process of finding how best to tackle record sealing requires a lot of thought to navigate through a state’s current policy. “I think we’re focused on what is the current landscape?” Burrell said. “What exists in systems? What exists in the policy? And then we’ll work with the state to figure out if it’s even something that they want to move forward with.”

Although Nevada does not allow expungement, a new process targeting record sealing could still help a lot of people who have cannabis convictions on their records receive the freedom they deserve.

“These are folks who have served their time, they’ve done their probation, they have been a model citizen for however long it’s been since their probation ended,” Considine said. “And this is just a way for them to find a better job, move up, become a nurse, go see their kids on a [military] base, go to Canada or … visit other countries or whatever it is that is stopping them.”

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