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One Ohio Public College Volunteers to be a Medical Marijuana Testing Site

Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program logo
OHIO MEDICAL MARIJUANA CONTROL PROGRAM

It appears the state’s new medical marijuana program has cleared a hurdle. A public college has stepped forward to serve as the state’s medical marijuana testing laboratory. 

The medical marijuana law requires an Ohio public college or university to test cannabis for potency and quality before it goes to dispensaries for sale.

The problem was schools were hesitant to get involved because of federal laws regarding marijuana and weren’t stepping forward to volunteer. Now a two-year college in Nelsonville in southeast Ohio says it will. Hocking College plans to use an endowment to buy the equipment necessary to do the work. The lab is expected to create more than a dozen new jobs.

The deal still needs approval from the Ohio Department of Commerce, the agency overseeing most of the medical marijuana program, which is supposed to be fully operating a year from now.

Jo Ingles is a professional journalist who covers politics and Ohio government for the Ohio Public Radio and Television for the Ohio Public Radio and Television Statehouse News Bureau. She reports on issues of importance to Ohioans including education, legislation, politics, and life and death issues such as capital punishment. Jo started her career in Louisville, Kentucky in the mid 80’s when she helped produce a televised presidential debate for ABC News, worked for a creative services company and served as a general assignment report for a commercial radio station. In 1989, she returned back to her native Ohio to work at the WOSU Stations in Columbus where she began a long resume in public radio.