Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:


After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.

Legal cannabis: the activists and the profiteers

Anna Madia

west-info.eu

Monday 01 Dec 2014



As with all movements, the pro-cannabis successes have also come with their own problems. The anti-prohibitionist breakthrough that has now been embraced by many American states is likely to divide the advocates of legalised marijuana into two camps. On one side there are the pure anti-prohibitionist activists, who have fought for years for the right to legalisation. On the other there is the world of business, which aims to profit from an industry that, according to the latest estimates, will have a turnover of $35 billion by 2020.

And it’s the dizzying profits that are pushing the activists to call for businesses, which are already making huge gains, to put their hands in their pockets to keep the campaign for legal cannabis politically alive and also to push the campaign further. Their goal is not just legalisation but also to start up a debate on issues such as drug addiction or the high rate of imprisonment in the US. This is what historic champions of the ‘Yes we cannabis’ campaign, such as Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance Group and Graham Boyd, founder of New Approach, are calling for. Both consider the big marijuana businesses to be short-sighted, with an interest only in making a profit today, without thinking about the new battles of tomorrow.

But can the grass-roots supporters also convince American capitalism that profit is not everything? For now, they try to get their message across by travelling from state to state holding talks and conferences, trying to persuade the audience to donate. Aaron Houston, strategist at Ghost Group and executive director of ‘Students for sensible drug policy’ describes it as “a Herculean effort”. But raising awareness is the first step. And Houston believes that US business should learn from the mistakes of Silicon Valley.

They need to understand that business and politics must work together to fully defeat prohibition, as well as realising that business itself is entirely political. The real gain is not cash, but being able to apply an appropriate set of standards in each state, thus rewriting the federal laws on cannabis.


http://www.west-info.eu/legal-cannabis-the-activists-and-the-profiteers/

 

 

 

After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back. 




This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.

Feel free to link to this page!