Ohio House votes to ban powdered alcohol

The Ohio House has passed a measure that would ban crystalline, or powdered alcohol, in the state.

House Bill 594 was reported out of committee Wednesday morning and passed informally by the House later in the day. The bill now goes to the Ohio Senate.

The bill would prohibit the sale or offering for sale for human consumption crystalline alcohol. It was sponsored by Reps. Ron Gerberry, D-Austintown, and Jim Buchy, R-Greenville, who claimed the substance was easy to abuse.

“The public health risk of powdered alcohol is too great for our state to ignore,” Buchy said in a press release announcing the bill. “We have to do our part in putting forth reasonable laws that protect our children and prevent the availability of drug forms that have a higher potential for abuse.”

As Ohio Watchdog previously reported, those concerns mirror those of U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who asked the Food and Drug Administration to ban it.

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