Every year it seems more and more outrageous legislation is proposed in statehouses across the country
We talk quite a bit about stigma in this issue.
You know, that persistent sideways glance you receive from some individuals at the Chamber of Commerce networking event. That resume that gets round-filed without a second glance because overseeing operations at a weed shop is, outside the industry, all-too-often viewed as standing around and getting high. The persistent belief that marijuana businesses are flush with cash and making obscene profits.
In this issue, I talk with the people at Confidence Analytics, who warn about the stubborn efforts from anti-cannabis activists trying to impose potency caps in various states across the country, as well as the fact that the cannabis industry is falling behind in the PR battle, which opens the door for onerous regulations.
I talk with Sara Payan, the host of the Planted with Sara Payan podcast, whose goal is to normalize cannabis and make sure cannabis activists have a seat at the table when it comes time for making policy. One of the big problems, she points out, is that many lawmakers still think of cannabis consumers as lazy potheads who don’t vote, don’t work and don’t contribute anything positive to society. Even more than 10 years after the first states started to legalize recreational marijuana, these old Reefer Madness beliefs persist.
I also appeared as a guest on the 406 Budcast, a Montana-based podcast, where we talked about some of the outrageous attempts by lawmakers to cripple the legal cannabis industry — an industry, I should note, that was approved with 57% of the vote in 2020. Possibly the most ridiculous of these attempts is Senate Bill 255, which would require purchasers of adult-use cannabis to sign up for a special ID card at the cost of $200. Not only is this a gross overreach by government and an unnecessary expense for an industry that has contributed about $150 million in tax revenue to state coffers, but it would also kill any out-of-state business for state-licensed retailers. SB255 ID cards would only be eligible for Montana residents, meaning, if nothing else, many of the 4 million annual visitors to Yellowstone National Park would be prohibited from buying state-legal products from state-licensed shops that pay a significant amount of state taxes. I can’t begin to explain how asinine this is. Imagine something like this being implemented for any other product. Imagine needing a state ID to buy booze, cigarettes, donuts, fireworks, lottery tickets, over-the-counter medications — anything that is the least bit controversial.
Imagine sitting down in a restaurant after a day of skiing at Big Sky and being told, no, you can’t buy a beer here because you need to be on a special registry that tracks alcohol consumers and is only eligible for Montana residents who pay a $200 fee for the privilege.
Hell, most states don’t even require anything like this to purchase firearms — and guns are the leading cause of death among children and teens in the United States.
State Senator Greg Hertz, a Republican from western Montana, who sponsored SB255, should be ashamed of this legislation.
Unrelated to SB255, state Representative John Fitzpatrick, another Republican from western Montana, recently angered the state’s cannabis industry with the comment that those working in public policy deserve to get paid more than people “who put dope in plastic bags and hand it across the counter.”
This all brings me back to the subject of stigma.
It was a major topic of conversation in the early days of legalization. I think cannabis businesspeople in Colorado and Washington were hyper-aware that the eyes of the nation were looking at them, waiting to see how this experiment would unfold. Many were waiting for the sky to fall, waiting for those moments to say, see, I told you legalizing pot was going to be a disaster.
I’m not here to say that legalization has been perfect. I’m still concerned about the use of pesticides and other chemicals, about the rise in crime related to cannabis retailers and production facilities, that we don’t have good data related to cannabis consumption and driving. But these are not “sky is falling” scenarios. Overall, legalization has gone much the way I thought it would: not without blemishes, but relatively smooth overall.
That said, I think people in the cannabis community quickly became comfortable with marijuana’s new status as a legal product. That early focus on each cannabis business being a representative of the industry at large died away a little bit — in part because the business has been such a challenge, and many companies are just doing what they can to survive every year. Time spent as an industry spokesperson is draining, especially when so many people hold more titles than can fit on their business card.
Without a clear and present danger, it’s easy to lose sight of the opposition, but some of the conversations I’ve had in the past couple of months and the proposed legislation I’ve seen are stark reminders: the cannabis stigma is alive and well.
Garrett Rudolph
Editor