From the Editor
Hi there,
Americans cannot agree on anything. Except, apparently, on cannabis legalization.
If you’re reading this, Tuesday’s election resulted in the worst-case scenario: swing states too close to call days later, an angry incumbent falsely declaring victory and patience running thin.
It almost doesn’t matter who actually wins at this point, as the closeness of the race confirms what one in three U.S. voters knew months ago: America is on the brink of another civil war.
Yet, if you only cared about cannabis legalization, Tuesday was a landslide bipartisan victory. New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota and Montana voted overwhelmingly in favour of ending cannabis prohibition entirely and even deep-red Mississippi legalized medical cannabis.
South Dakota, in fact, became the first U.S. state to approve medical AND recreational cannabis at the same time!
America is in a dark place, but even as the light dims on any hope of a leader winning a broad mandate to reunite a bitterly divided country, the future of cannabis has never looked brighter.
Yours in pursuit of progress,
Volume 1: Issue 8
Cannabis will win the next American civil war
by Jameson Berkow
America’s state-by-state approach to cannabis legalization has spawned a sector built better than any to withstand major supply chain disruptions or a further breakdown of national unity. Federally, history suggests even the most conservative lawmakers will have no fiscal alternative but to legalize cannabis if they want the United States to survive.
Every part of the United States of America is already a separate country as far as the cannabis industry is concerned.
Even the so-called “multi-state operators” or MSOs – billion-dollar ostensibly ‘national’ corporations with legal cannabis assets in two, three or, in some cases, as many as ten states – are largely composed of two, three or in some cases as many as ten self-contained businesses. That is partly due to ongoing federal prohibition; nobody wants to own a business that would put them in the same legal category as heroin dealers.
Another much less talked about reason for the MSO structure is the unique and ever-changing state and municipal-level regulations on which their entire existence is based. Some states allow companies to vertically integrate by owning production, processing and retail operations, while others strictly forbid such business models; forcing companies to pick between cultivation, processing or retail.
