I’m currently making my way through Can Legal Weed Win? The Blunt Realities of Cannabis Economics, an excellent new book by economists Daniel Sumner and Rubin Goldstein about the major unforeseen problems with the economic landscape of legalized recreational cannabis use. One particular tidbit stood out:
In the midst of the rubble, others claim to see a silver lining in the legal weed crisis: a new “buy-low opportunity,” which has arisen from the near collapse of the market for legal weed. These fearless optimists, whose ranks include former U.S. senator Tom Daschle, a keynote speaker at MJBizCon, double down on their positions and steer others to join them. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota who served as U.S. Senate majority leader, is an adviser to and shareholder in Northern Swan Holdings, a multinational weed cultivator with offices in New York, Toronto, Bogotá, and Frankfurt that raised about $100 million in venture capital.
Joining Daschle in the ranks of top U.S. government leaders-turned-cannabis entrepreneurs (or lobbyist cheerleaders, depending on how much of their own pensions you think they planted to weed) is John Boehner. Boehner, from the other side of the aisle, was a Republican congressman from Ohio who served as speaker of the House from 2011 to 2015. During his career in Congress, Boehner was a steadfast and outspoken opponent of legalizing weed. Today, Boehner is on the board of Acreage Holdings, which announced a $3.4 billion acquisition deal with Canopy Growth, the world’s most valuable weed company.
That’s right: John Boehner—who said in 2011 that he was “unalterably opposed to the legalization of marijuana”— is now all-in for Big Weed. Today, he’s pulling in as much as $20 million from the industry, a chunk of which comes from his newfound position as a cannabis legalization lobbyist in D.C. I did a quick Google search, and found this NPR story on Boehner’s transformation from back in 2019:
To be sure, Boehner says he has never tried marijuana. “I’ve never used the product. I really have no plans to use the product,” he told host Michel Martin in an interview for NPR’s All Things Considered. “But if other people use the product,” Boehner said, “who am I to say they shouldn’t?”
His embrace of marijuana legalization marks a sharp reversal for Boehner since his time in Congress. In 1999, in his one and only vote on the issue, he voted to prohibit medicinal marijuana in Washington, D.C. In 2011, he wrote a constituent to say he was “unalterably opposed to the legalization of marijuana.”
But since his retirement in 2015, Boehner’s position has evolved. Last April, he joined the board of Acreage Holdings, a publicly-traded cannabis company based in New York. And on Friday, he appeared at the South by Southwest festival for a keynote on legalization.
“I feel like I’m like your average American who over the years began to look at this a little differently and I think over the last five years my position, it has kind of softened up and softened up,” Boehner said.
His “position has evolved.” Huh. I wonder what softened him up?