Medical Marijuana Is Apparently A Joke To Ohio Football Fans

Football is difficult for everybody: Players put their bodies on the line every week, the media has to act like they're constantly surprised when people get hurt in an inherently violent sport, die-hard fans get super stressed out during what are already the most depressing months of the year, and casual fans feel like they can't enjoy it without looking like an asshole. And for reasons that nobody can fully explain, professional football is just plain worse in Ohio. The Cincinnati Bengals spent much of the year "tanking" their season, and the Cleveland Browns had an on-field murder attempt.

That's why Rob Ryan of the Ohio Patient Network (a pro-cannabis group) submitted a petition to the State Medical Board of Ohio to make being a fan of the Browns or the Bengals a condition deserving of medical marijuana. Normal people will understand that this is largely a joke, and the State Medical Board will almost assuredly reject the petition. Here's the thing, though -- the joke isn't at the expense of the Browns or the Bengals. It's at the expense of medical marijuana, which is... not great right now.

Cannabis supporters really tried to floor it in Ohio by skipping the medical stuff and going straight to recreational marijuana legalization. Voters shot down a measure that would have legalized it statewide in 2015 because, get this, it would have made Nick Lachey a very rich man. To quote the Washington Post, "Yes, that Nick Lachey." The measure would have restricted weed growth to just a few farms, much of which would have been owned by Lachey, and even the stoners couldn't get on board with that.

But the following year, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed a bill making medical marijuana legal in the state of Ohio. After a bunch of procedural junk was squared away, medical marijuana sales began in January of 2019, and one year later... it is an absolute farce. According to the Columbus Dispatch, there are only around 52,000 medical marijuana cardholders, out of about 11 and a half million people living in the state. So it's not like budding business owners feel compelled to open up dispensaries on every block. There are only a few dozen dispensaries open statewide, and many of those medical cardholders haven't even used their card to buy anything. You might think of Ohio as a small state, geographically, but the drive from Cleveland to Cincinnati is a long one with a whole lot of nothing in between. Why would people go hours out of their way to buy legal pot, when their seedy nephew Brandon is just a text away?

That brings us to cost: during California's pre-recreational era, just about any idiot could waltz into a doctor and get a medical card on the cheap, but that whole process runs $200 or more in Ohio. A gram of medical marijuana goes for about $18 in an Ohio dispensary, compared to about $13-$14 a gram in Los Angeles. And there's just no way the stuff in Ohio is as good as the stuff in LA.

So anyway, the marijuana in Ohio is a joke and the football is just as stupid and nobody should really be laughing at this point.