Cannabis has never been a “for-profit” industry in any country on earth; at least not until United States voters made it one. According to Gallup polls; the end of the cannabis prohibition seems almost inevitable considering a record 61 percent of Americans support legal adult use, but many questions remain unanswered. How will cannabis be sold and advertised? How will marijuana sales be regulated? Who will dominate the markets? Will weed be changed? If so, how? Finally, how do we know the legal sale of cannabis will not create a disaster?
These questions do not have simple answers, but CBSN set out to address them by traveling to Canada as well as five states and interviewing people on all sides of the issue from consumers to sellers, lobbyists to elected representatives. At one point Dan Riffle was one of the nation’s most influential activist for cannabis legalization. Riffle is now against what he views as a commercial takeover of the industry and the creation of a market which depends on marijuana abusers and children.
“Legalization is happening, you know, for the first and only time,” he said. “And it seems like instead we’re just going to do alcohol again. We’re just going to do tobacco again. We’re just going to create this big, commercial model.”
Once long-time supporter of legalization and professor of public policy at New York University; Mark Kleiman, shares Riffle’s concerns. “We’re lurching from prohibition to the most wide-open kind of legalization,” he said. “Probably a bad idea.”
Mason Tvert; Riffle’s former colleague at the Marijuana Policy Project, disagrees big time. Earl Blumenauer, a congressman from Oregon, and the leading voice for marijuana legalization nationwide also disagrees big time. They both argue that there is already a “Big Pot” –the Mexican drug cartels. They emphasize that what is actually frightening is not high profits and declining public health; rather criminal gangs selling a product that is not safe and the heartless criminal justice system putting people behind bars for consuming it.
“What’s scary is that we are destroying lives. What’s scary is we can’t protect children now. What’s scary is that we are subsidizing Mexican drug cartels,” Blumenauer said.
“What’s scary is that the unaccompanied minors that are flooding into the United States are here because of the disruption in Central America and the destabilization in Mexico. … African-American young men are four times more likely to be arrested or hassled for something that most Americans now think should be legal. Now those are things that are scary now! Those are things that are wrong now!”
Brendan Kennedy is an important person in the evolving landscape of legal pot as well as CEO of Privateer, a holding company for mainstream marijuana brands. He is the first marijuana entrepreneur to get over $100 million from investors including backers in Facebook, Spotify and SpaceX. He desires for Americans to trust him to sell weed responsibly.
Kennedy answered questions such as “Is there a trade-off in this industry between profits and public health?” and “Does it concern you that according to federal data, over 4 million Americans meet the criteria for cannabis abuse or dependence?”
Kennedy believes cannabis consumers will benefit because they will have access to a safer and better regulated product. He also feels that consumers of marijuana will benefit from access to a wider variety of cannabis-based products.
“I think that most people in the United States who want to consume cannabis are already consuming it,” he said. “It will be interesting to see how the different products lower the percentage of people who actually consume via smoke. I think we’ll see other form factors that will be far more appealing from a health perspective than actually smoking cannabis. … I know more than a dozen elite athletes who consume cannabis. But they’re not consuming a joint. They’re vaporizing. They’re using cannabis as a topical for sore muscles.”
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