This fall, a potential marijuana legalization initiative in Ohio would give control of all commercial pot farms to the group of investors who are bankrolling the campaign. The plan, which many call a monopoly, has infuriated local officials and weed activists nationwide.
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ProgressOhio
One thing rich people excel at is being friends with other rich people. It's a talent that can come in handy, especially when the investment of a lifetime comes along. For Nick Lachey, the former B-list boy-bander turned perpetual reality show hunk, the chance to corner Ohio's legal marijuana industry came through his friendship with Arizona Cardinals defensive end Frostee Rucker, who used to play for Lachey's beloved Cincinnati Bengals.
About a year ago, Rucker's agent, James Gould, began gathering a small group of friends and friends of friends, with the goal of raising enough money to draft and pass a recreational marijuana legalization ballot initiative in the state — meaning they could bypass the state legislature and put the issue in front of Ohio citizens for a vote. But unlike past attempts at legalization in other states, which were mostly drafted by social justice activists and paid for by liberal billionaires like George Soros, this one would be written specifically to enrich the people who financed the campaign: a political action committee that Gould and his business partner, Ohio political strategist Ian James, called ResponsibleOhio.
The proposed constitutional amendment would restrict all commercial growth and extraction of weed to 10 specific farms — farms that are owned and operated by the investors bankrolling the effort to pass the initiative. That means the entire legal marijuana industry in Ohio would be controlled by a group of wealthy businesspeople, or what those opposed to the initiative are calling a monopoly, an oligopoly, or a cartel. The rest of the state would be able to apply for one of the 1,150 licenses for marijuana retail stores and testing labs, but all of the shops would need to buy their pot from a group that currently confers over conference call once a week.
"It's like if Thomas Jefferson and George Washington wrote into the Constitution that they were the only ones allowed to grow cotton," Ohio State Auditor Dave Yost told BuzzFeed News. "The whole thing is un-American."
In the next few days, the Ohio secretary of state will announce whether the controversial initiative has gathered enough signatures to make the November ballot.
Although a few other states with medical marijuana have severely restricted the number of cultivation and processing licenses available in order to limit the overall availability of the drug, no state has passed a legalization initiative that so wholly places control of the supply in the hands of the people who paid for the legalization effort.
Over the course of the past year, the ResponsibleOhio campaign has roiled the state's political establishment and left the nation's marijuana activists, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts utterly divided.
"The nice thing is that they could help pay for all of the good things about ending marijuana prohibition in America, like reducing arrests," said Drug Policy Alliance Executive Director Ethan Nadelmann, who has helped harness major donors to pass several marijuana ballot initiatives. "But at the same time, I don't think that the self-interest of groups like ResponsibleOhio will create optimal public policy. And we just don't have the resources to compete with for-profit investors."
Photo Illustration by BuzzFeed News / Getty Images
Pot culture has long revered the outlaw growers who take great risks to supply the black and gray markets that dominate everywhere but Colorado, Washington, and Oregon. Many people assumed that legalization would offer a clear pathway for criminals, eccentrics, and aspiring moguls alike to participate in a legitimate weed economy — not benefit already wealthy business executives in suits. Media reports touting success stories from the "green rush" in Colorado and Washington often feature the kind of scrappy small businesses that Americans love to get behind.
And yet the people who will profit the most if ResponsibleOhio's initiative passes aren't all that different from the people who are paying lawyers and consultants to help them gobble up the expensive, restrictive licenses necessary to grow, process, and sell medical marijuana all across the country. If and when recreational marijuana becomes legal in states where it is available with a doctor's recommendation, the people who already have licenses will have an enormous head start. More and more, it's becoming apparent that the people who will profit most off of legal marijuana are going to look less like the third-generation backwoods farmers in Northern California or your average neighborhood pot dealer and more like Lachey: white, rich, and male, with no criminal record and no experience whatsoever in the cannabis industry.
"Clearly, marijuana legalization is coming," read the investor prospectus that Gould and James showed Lachey in Gould's office last year. "Our goal with this business opportunity is to uniquely position Principal Funders for a growth market in Ohio where annual sales are expected to exceed $1 billion dollars."
Three months after his first meeting with James and Gould, the former 98 Degrees frontman said he was in, along with Rucker, retired NBA legend Oscar Robertson, two descendants of William Howard Taft, and at least a dozen other millionaires looking to become billionaires.
Now stoners and activists are debating which future might be worse: a
continuation of total prohibition, or an oligopoly of rich people controlling the legal marijuana market. After all, ResponsibleOhio amended the initiative this spring to allow individuals to grow up to four plants for personal consumption after getting a $50 license. But on the other hand, selling even a gram of what you've grown to a friend would still be a felony, and the thought of ceding control over the commercial production of weed to a small group of investors makes most people queasy.
The president of the Ohio chapter of NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) was recently voted out of power after supporting ResponsibleOhio and aggressively trying to convince the rest of his board of directors to do the same. Russ Belville, the host of a popular cannabis-themed radio show, has gotten a lot of hate on Twitter for publicly supporting the initiative.
"Just because they have a bad business plan doesn't mean it's a good idea to let marijuana prohibition continue ruining lives," he said. "I have activist friends in the national organizations that privately support ResponsibleOhio but are afraid to admit it publicly. That's how divisive this has become."
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1IL6IwS
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