Candidate Name: Gideon Cunningham
Program: Public Policy Program
Committee Chairs: Dr. Jason H. Windett
Committee Members: Dr. A. Lee Hannah, Dr. Jon Overton, Dr. Scott T. Fitzgerald, and Dr. Martha Kropf
Abstract: More than a decade after the first state-based adult-use cannabis legalization, over half of Americans now live in a legal-cannabis state, while 26 states retain prohibition. In 2023, Ohio became the largest Republican-voting state to legalize cannabis by ballot initiative. Each new state legalization offers an opportunity to test alternative hypotheses. Chapter two examines Ohio's county-level ballot initiative results and finds two previously unexamined relationships: a positive association between medical cannabis dispensaries and legalization support, and a non-linear relationship between overdose death rates and support, which rises then falls past a threshold.
Less is known about what shapes public perceptions of which cannabis policy goals states with legal cannabis should prioritize, or who should have primary governance authority. Building on legalization support literature and using existing state-level policy heterogeneity, chapters three and four examine how identity and policy experience shape these perceptions in a national survey sample. Chapter three finds that policy goal prioritization is unrelated to existing state policies or years of exposure but diverges most sharply by political identification and education. Chapter four finds that governance preferences are conditional on both legalization status and political identification.