Springfield, OH Public Conduct: Public Marijuana Use (2026)

Codified Ordinances Chapter 513 adopts Ohio's adult-use cannabis law as city ordinance. Section 513.09(a) allows an adult use consumer to use, possess, transfer without payment, or purchase adult use cannabis, and subsection (b)(1) caps lawful possession at two and one-half ounces of cannabis in most forms or fifteen grams of extract. That permission does not extend to public consumption: § 513.09(h)(2) provides that, except as otherwise provided in Ohio R.C. Chapter 3780, an adult use consumer who uses adult use cannabis in public areas, or who violates the passenger-consumption ban in subsection (d)(2) while riding in a vehicle, motor vehicle, streetcar, trackless trolley, bike, watercraft or aircraft, is guilty of a minor misdemeanor.

Subsection (d)(1) separately criminalizes operating any of those conveyances while using or under the influence of cannabis, tying that offense to Ohio R.C. 4511.19 (OVI). Under § 501.99(a)(2)E, the citywide penalty section, a minor misdemeanor carries a fine of not more than one hundred fifty dollars ($150.00); the jail-term schedule in § 501.99(b)(1) runs only from misdemeanors of the first through fourth degree, so a minor misdemeanor under this section is fine-only. Enforcement in the City of Springfield falls to the Springfield Police Division, since public consumption is a citable offense observed in the field rather than a Community Development code case.

The distinct penalties in § 513.09(h) for underage identification fraud, parental facilitation, and trafficking violations do not apply to a simple public-use citation, which is governed solely by paragraph (h)(2).