Recreational weed in Ohio, one year later

Green Leaf Therapy was bustling with early morning customers one day last week. Some wanted weed for sleep, others for chronic pain or just to relax after a long day.

A year after Ohio legalized recreational cannabis, business has been “amazing” at the dispensary, said its co-owner, Vicki Groner.

Green Leaf Therapy opened in 2023 in the 10,000-person town of Struthers, and sold medical cannabis until recreational became legal Aug. 6, 2024.

Ms. Groner and her son, Cory, opened the dispensary to help people with chronic pain. It’s a small business for the family, with her son-in-law and daughter-in-law involved now, too.

The move to fully legalized pot has been good for business in Ohio.

Since last August, the state has sold $703 million worth of recreational cannabis, part of nearly $3 billion in total sales to date from medical and nonmedical cannabis combined, according to the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control. The state legalized medical cannabis in 2016, with sales beginning in 2019.

Vicki Groner, co-owner of Green Leaf Therapy, a cannabis dispensary store located in Struthers, Ohio, poses for a portrait inside the store Thursday.

“It's definitely a big difference now that we’re into [recreational mariiuana sales],” said Alex Keenan, a 26-year-old Green Leaf employee — those on the sales floor are called “budtenders” — and an Etna, Pa., native. “Patients are still amazing. Even when we have the new patients coming in, it's still amazing. I mean, I'm selling cannabis. It’s fantastic.”

Gov. Josh Shapiro’s push to fully legalize cannabis in Pennsylvania has emphasized the fiscal benefits: His original (and still-to-be passed) 2025-26 budget proposal cited a potential $537 million gain in new revenue from recreational cannabis. A May attempt to pass a bill died in the Senate; since then, new legislation has been introduced by Sen. Daniel Laughlin, R-Erie, and Sen. Sharif Street, D-Philadelphia.

On weekends, the line at Green Leaf Therapy is out the door, said Samantha Lapresta, a 23-year-old Struthers resident and customer.

Ohio’s experience after a year of recreational cannabis sales highlights the state’s momentum as well as some potential consequences, such as accidental childhood overdose, that other states considering the move, like Pennsylvania, can consider.

An increase in sales, customers

Total cannabis product sales jumped 53% the year after Ohio legalized recreational weed, generating an additional $1 billion in total cannabis sales since last August, per Ohio’s Division of Cannabis Control monthly report.

While she declined to share revenue specifics for her dispensary, Ms. Groner said expanding to recreational has translated to an increase in customers.

Where they would have about 200 customers a day as a medical dispensary, Green Leaf Therapy now sees between 450 and 600 daily customers.

The dispensary, operating under a “dual use” license, has hired more budtenders and invested in educating staff about the industry.

As per state regulations, the process is measured, controlled and under surveillance. Customers who walk into Green Leaf approach a receptionist counter with a waiting area, where their government-issued IDs are scanned and they are placed in an electronic queue.

They then enter the sales floor, where budtenders work with them to answer questions and find products.

Only a handful of customers are allowed on the sales floor at a time to reduce crowding and allow for a more personalized experience, said Ms. Groner.

“The biggest transition was adding more staff and making sure we could accommodate the customers,” she said. “No one wants to sit in a waiting room, so we try to get them in and out as quickly as possible.”

The state has also continued to add dispensaries as more licenses are issued. In Ohio, there are currently 159 fully licensed dispensaries for medical and recreational cannabis sales, 11 provisional dual licenses, and 88 provisional licenses for medical only, according to the state’s Department of Commerce website.

A sticker stuck on an exterior window of Green Leaf Therapy certifies that the store is licensed through the Ohio Department of Commerce.

The daily amount that customers can purchase has also been tweaked from the initial Aug. 6 launch of recreational sales; on June 4, people could purchase 2.5 ounces of flower, up from a single ounce.

Initially aiming to prioritize those with medical cards, “the market has demonstrated the ability to support both medical marijuana patients and non-medical consumers alike,” the state’s Cannabis Control said in a May news release.

‘It should have been legalized years ago’

Chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder are the biggest issues customers at Green Leaf come to treat, said Ms. Groner. Her store serves lots of veterans and offers a 20% veterans discount.

Customers on Thursday morning were seeking cannabis for myriad reasons.

Ms. Lapresta left Green Leaf with a vape pen she uses to relax. She has three young kids and works at a Dairy Queen.

“I have such a hectic life,” she said. “I use a vape pen because it doesn’t smell, and the kids don’t get into it. It’s nice to relax at the end of the night.”

Cannabis products sit in a display case at Green Leaf Therapy on Thursday.

Tom, a 64-year-old longtime resident of Struthers, exclusively uses edibles for sleep. Tom asked that his first name only be used for this story, for privacy reasons.

“I only use it at 9 p.m. at night,” he said. “My whole life, I only got three to four hours of sleep. Now I get eight.”

Tom has tried Ambien and other pharmaceuticals for his insomnia but said they made him drowsy and dehydrated and led to sleepwalking. Cannabis was the only thing that helped.

“It should have been legalized years ago,” he said.

Some of the budtenders have personal experience self-treating with cannabis. Ms. Keenan used cannabis for anxiety and PTSD before she started working at Green Leaf in 2023. She tried antidepressants but said they brought on too many side effects and didn’t work for her.

“How it helped me was astonishing,” she said. “It was an entire life change. So I wanted to do that for people. I wanted to come in with any knowledge or experience I had, just to help anybody in any way that I could.”

Small town pushback

Not everyone feels that way.

As part of recreational legalization, Ohio cities and towns — like the majority of states with recreational weed — were permitted to opt out of participating by placing a temporary moratorium on hosting a dispensary in their area.

As of Wednesday, Aug. 6, about 120 Ohio towns, or about 10%, had active moratoriums on the sale of cannabis in their area, according to tracking by the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. About half of those are in towns with fewer than 10,000 people.

Bellville, a village of 2,000 between Akron and Columbus, is one such place that voted in favor of a temporary moratorium, approved by its village council and enacted five months after recreational cannabis became legal in the state. It’s in place until January.

Village Council President Justin Enix said that because of the village’s proximity to Interstate 71, a dispensary expressed interest in opening. Residents, however, were concerned about a potential spike in crime.

“We had to kind of react quickly, because we had a legitimate dispensary that wanted to come into the area,” he said. “We didn't know all the implications of everything, so we put the moratorium in place so that we could gather more information, and we've ultimately decided to put it on the ballot for our voters this November.”

The length of the moratoriums was up to each municipality to decide; some last as long as two years or are listed as “indeterminate.”

During a town hall meeting to decide on the moratorium, Mr. Enix said many in favor of allowing the dispensary spoke about cannabis’ medicinal benefits.

An employee of Green Leaf Therapy prepares orders placed online on Thursday.

“The arguments always went back to the medicinal side of things, like, ‘People use this for anxiety,’” he said. “‘People use this for all kinds of different ailments.’ I think that’s where they were maybe not reaching the other side, because the other side was totally OK with medicinal use, they were more concerned with the recreational.

“Small towns like Bellville weren't prepared for it,” he added. “I think a lot of people throughout the state felt like it was kind of just sprung on us.”

Looking at Pa.

Neighboring state Pennsylvania has had its own recent battles with trying to legalize the drug.

Mr. Shapiro has said more than once he would sign any cannabis legislation that landed on his desk. But in May, a bill to legalize recreational cannabis died quickly in the Senate, after it passed in the House 102-101, due to a provision that would prevent private dispensaries and instead require cannabis sales to be overseen by a state oversight board similar to the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board.

Mr. Laughlin and Mr. Street on July 10 introduced a new attempt, Senate Bill 120, which would establish a Pennsylvania Cannabis Control Board. Co-sponsors include Sens. Nikil Saval, D-Philadelphia; Marty Flynn, D-Lackawanna and Luzerne; John Kane, D-Chester and Delaware; and Timothy Kearney, D-Delaware.

To legalize recreational cannabis in Pennsylvania legislators will have to work together to draft a bill that satisfies both parties and gets to the governor’s desk.

Until then, the commonwealth can look west toward Ohio for a model … and north toward New York, east toward New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont, and south toward Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.