6/07/2017
“What do you want, what do you hate, what’s going to turn you off so I can’t ask you for money?”
This was the question the nation’s top pot lobbyist recently posed to tobacco executives in Michigan, where his lobbying group has drafted language for a recreational marijuana legalization law and is now collecting signatures to place it on the state’s 2018 ballot.
That Rob Kampia, Executive Director of the Marijuana Policy Project (MPP), went on-the-record to admit he asked this of Michigan tobacco companies is both alarming and contemptible. MPP is the lead special interest group responsible for funding and organizing every state-based marijuana commercialization campaign in the U.S. Kampia’s shameless solicitation for contributions from the tobacco industry should send chills down the spine of every American who remembers our painful national experience with Big Tobacco.
The nascent marijuana industry, which has been profiting off of high-potency commercial products, is not only following in Big Tobacco’s footsteps, but now openly admitting to taking money from them.
Make no mistake, the marijuana industry is laying the groundwork to take center stage as Big Tobacco 2.0. Tobacco companies have been eyeing marijuana as the next big addictive enterprise since the 1970’s, and now they’re getting in on this cash cow in the ultimate quid pro quo: taking money in return for shaping the language of today’s marijuana legalization initiatives
