Medical marijuana: Don’t let out-of-state corporations grab North Carolina’s profits | Opinion
Editor’s note: The writer is a lawyer and consultant for state governments on marijuana policy.
A bill that would legalize medical marijuana advanced in the N.C. legislature this week, passing the Senate on Tuesday. And, N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said recently that he believes “more than 50% of lawmakers now back medical cannabis reform.”
The Compassionate Care Act (Senate Bill 3) would unleash the profit motive on millions of dollars’ worth of medical marijuana commerce in our state. But it’s likely to let well-funded out-of-state corporations grab the lion’s share of that money. They would then want to legalize lucrative recreational use quickly and be first in line to sell it.
North Carolina’s bill would award permanent licenses to only 10 seed-to-store conglomerates chosen by a commission on the basis of marijuana business experience (which few North Carolinians have).
The bill imposes residency requirements, but federal courts say states can’t discriminate against out-of-state people in the marijuana business. So marijuana sellers in North Carolina need not be our familiar neighbors — they can instead be huge corporations seeking to maximize profits.
To keep profit motive down, we could start with state sales, — a retail monopoly like New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Quebec have with marijuana — building on what we have with liquor. State enterprise keeps the profit motive under public control.
State sales are what Baptist teetotaler and Republican prohibitionist John D. Rockefeller Jr., recommended for alcohol as Prohibition ended, saying: “only as the profit motive is eliminated is there any hope of controlling the liquor traffic in the interest of a decent society.” And while the U.S. Constitution says private sellers have a right to advertise a product once it’s legal, but the state, to keep the noise down for this “temptation good,” needn’t advertise at all.
Don’t be misled: The federal government wouldn’t shut down state sales. Louisiana has been growing and selling medical marijuana for years, through land-grant LSU and Southern University. The federal government is turning a blind-eye to state-legal marijuana sales.
While state commerce violates free market principles, SB 3’s 10 permanent licenses make for oligopoly, not market freedom. Sure, state delivery and eventually stores would take time and money to set up, but awarding licenses to private sellers “on the merits” or by lottery, SB-3-style, is a recipe for delays and litigation. Four years elapsed between the passage of a medical marijuana law and the first legal sale of medicine in West Virginia and Delaware.
Medical marijuana is likely to blaze the supply-chain trail for recreational marijuana, where the big money is. But recreational marijuana makes people nervous. Former California Gov. Jerry Brown worried, “how many people can get stoned and still have a great state or a great nation?” Christian conservatives and public health experts worry about enlisting profit motive to promote sales of a powerful drug. A 2013 poll on marijuana legalization showed N.C. voters favored state retailing over private retailing by more than three to one.
State sales are the cautious path, keeping the noise down, and keeping the money here. As we start cautiously by legalizing medical marijuana, we can always shift from safe state sales to profit-motivated private sales, but we can never shift back.
This story was originally published March 1, 2023 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Medical marijuana: Don’t let out-of-state corporations grab North Carolina’s profits | Opinion."