How should I vote? Ohio edition

It’s rare for me to be undecided on how I’m going to vote with 48 hours to go, at least on an issue or race I care about, but here I sit. While 2016 is shaping up to be the year the dam breaks on marijuana legalization, Ohio has the only recreational legalization initiative on the ballot in 2015. I’m on record here as a proponent of the view that while some approaches to legalization are preferable to others, these policy details matter a great deal less than ending the practice of making criminals out of marijuana users as soon as possible.

Issue 3 is testing the limits of that view. It represents the best and worst of initiative politics at once. The best, of course, is that a dreadful policy with elite consensus support is finally being effectively challenged. The worst is that issue 3 is a cynical exercise in profiteering; it would set up a constitutionally mandated monopoly for 10 sellers, who are, unsurprisingly, bankrolling the campaign. (Further demonstrating the absurdity of initiative politics, opponents are supporting issue 2, which would make state-created monopolies unconstitutional. What happens if both issue 2 and 3 pass? No one seems to know!) My inclination would be to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good and contribute to ending the gross injustices of the drug war the first chance I get, but in this case, should issue 3 fail, there appears to be a much better initiative for the 2016 ballot, which should also produce a friendlier electorate. Is a year’s worth of arrests and prosecutions a price worth paying? I’m curious to hear how our Ohio readers/voters are leaning.