The Entrepreneurial Law article discusses how regulation can be a burden on entrepreneurs as well as an opportunity. This made me think about the legalization of marijuana in Canada. Due to its illegal nature, marijuana sales require occur on the black market. Over the summer, my firm dealt with many entrepreneurs interested in navigating Canada’s new marijuana legislation. They wanted to use the opportunity provided by a changing law to enter an industry estimated at $23 Billion. Based on the article, I am interested to see if the legislation will enable or hurt entrepreneurs as they attempt to move away from the black market and into a regulated industry similar to alcohol sales in Canada. The article below discusses the major opportunity this change in legislation provides entrepreneurs.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canada-cannabis-greenrush-1.4383010
Interesting read, Mark. Last year California legalized marijuana for recreational and medical use and this came into effect Jan 1, 2018. While the legalization of marijuana in California definitely helps entrepreneurs, Jeff Sessions recently announced that he will be going after marijuana on the federal level (whether it be medical or recreational). I am interested to see how this will affect the marijuana business in California.
I’ve followed the Attorney General’s comments as well. I am mindful of the legitimate concerns associated with legalization of marijuana (and we’re just starting to see some of the concerns realized), but I confess that I think the feds trying to enforce marijuana laws, even as more and more states decriminalize and legalize the drug, is a fool’s errand; destined to fail, but only after a very high price has been paid. In my opinion, a high enough price has *already* been paid, in the form of hundreds of billions of dollars spend on interdiction, incarceration of non-violent drug users, the creation of an utterly unregulated black market, and political corruption. Of course, the same could be said of other drugs – which are significantly more harmful than marijuana. To be philosophically consistent, I should be arguing that ALL drugs should be legalized and regulated (cocaine, heroin, etc) – but I just can’t bring myself to make that argument.
Interesting discussion on this topic so far! There was another article that also recently addressed a practical component of the recent changes in how the law treats marijuana. The article below discusses how banks are interested in the ability to work with marijuana distributors in states where cannabis is legalized, but are afraid to do so because of the conflicting federal regulations. As a result, the article points out that the multi-billion dollar cannabis industry is conducted virtually completely in cash, and considers some of the challenges that come along with such a limitation.
For me, the narrow topic of cannabis legalization and how state laws conflict with federal laws brings up an important question: how does the law respond when a new, entrepreneurial venture disrupts the status quo, causing an apparent and unresolved conflict in the law as we see with cannabis regulation in different states today compared to federal regulations?
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/307848
Matt,
This was actually an issue my I dealt with at my firm last summer. Many of the major banks are afraid to deal with the marijuana until it becomes completely legal. As such, many of the major law firms are unable to work with the marijuana industry if they want to maintain their major bank clients. This creates an opportunity for entrepreneurs and solutions outside of the more established banks and firms who are waiting until the legislation is complete. It will be interesting to see if the first mover advantage will work in this scenario.