COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio’s licensed dispensaries are selling recreational marijuana in smaller packages — flower capped at one ounce, edibles at 10 milligrams a serving — under a state rule that took effect Oct. 5. It is the latest in a series of moves by state officials to narrow a market that Ohio voters created themselves three years ago.
The rule, Ohio Administrative Code 1301:18-4-06, was written by the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control under the agency’s own rulemaking authority. No legislator voted on it, and no voter did either.
What voters did approve came in November 2023, when Ohioans passed Issue 2 with about 57 percent of the vote and wrote the terms of a legal adult-use market into state law themselves, through an initiated statute.
The state’s case for the tighter rules is safety and order. A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Commerce, which oversees the Division of Cannabis Control, said the updated limits “align with the initiated statute and Senate Bill 56 and provide a framework tailored specifically to non-medical consumers.” Gov. Mike DeWine has made the safety case directly: his office has said intoxicating cannabis products were “legally marketed to kids, sold to kids, and ingested by kids,” citing Ohio Poison Control figures showing exposures among people 19 and younger rising from 419 in 2021 to 994 in 2024, more than half of them children five and under.
The record since the vote runs the other direction. Senate Bill 56, signed by DeWine on Dec. 19, 2025 and effective March 20, 2026, rewrote the initiated statute’s terms: potency ceilings of 35 percent THC for flower and 70 percent for extracts that voters never approved, and a redefinition of hemp by total THC that reclassified the hemp products sold in ordinary stores as marijuana — sellable, from that day forward, only through licensed dispensaries. The package caps followed by agency rule in October.
The legal market those moves leave standing is a limited one. About 190 dual-use dispensaries operate statewide under state licenses, and adult-use sales carry a 10 percent state excise tax on top of regular sales tax — a tax the hemp products wiped off ordinary shelves never carried.
Critics of the rewrite say the structure is the point. Columbus Dispatch columnist Wesley Bryant described the system as a “limited license program” amounting to an “abolition of competition.” Michael Tindall of the Ohio Healthy Alternatives Association called Senate Bill 56 “an attack on Ohio’s consumers” and a “gut punch to Ohio farmers and small businesses.”
The organized pushback has so far failed. The Ohioans for Cannabis Choice referendum campaign, which sought to put the rewrite before the same voters who passed Issue 2, missed its March 2026 signature deadline. Ohio’s licensed marijuana industry opposed the referendum and defended the law.
The October rule itself caps a package of dried plant material at one ounce, or 28.3 grams. Vape packages can hold no more than three cartridges or devices, each capped at two grams, with no product sold for direct customer use above 90 percent THC and a serving defined as one inhalation lasting two seconds. Adult-use edibles are limited to 10 milligrams of THC per portion and 100 milligrams per package; infused beverages are capped at 10 milligrams per container, twelve containers to a package. A single patch, capsule or pill cannot exceed 50 milligrams; an oral pouch or strip cannot exceed 10 milligrams; oral drops and sprays are capped at 30 milliliters per package; cannabis-infused cosmetics cannot exceed three ounces; packages of clones, live plants and seeds are limited to six.
The caps are package limits, not purchase limits — the daily transaction limits, 2.5 ounces of plant material and 15,000 milligrams of THC in other products, did not change, according to the Division. Medical marijuana products keep the 55-milligram per-serving limit that already applied to registered patients.
The licensed industry is adapting to the smaller shelf. “As the regulatory landscape evolves, Thrive will continue to adapt alongside our brand partners to meet state requirements and best serve our customers,” said Howard Schacter, a spokesperson for Thrive Dispensaries in Tiffin and Columbus, when the rule took effect.
None of the caps — not the potency ceilings, not the hemp redefinition, not the package limits — appeared in the Issue 2 text Ohio voters approved in 2023.
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