Blog : The Changing Face of the Marijuana Industry

by Ed Zwirn on March 26th, 2014

The hippies are being pushed aside by the suits. I suppose it was inevitable, but the transition of marijuana from a counterculture badge of honor to a profitable, taxable legit business activity has its downside.

It's been 42 years since Cheech & Chong pointed the way to the future with their aggressively humorous promotion of the weed. Their "Acapulco Gold Filters" commercial not only satirized the cigarette commercials which were omnipresent in the media at that time, the spot also contained a glimpse of a future in which cannabis is advertised and sold out in the open and Madison Avenue advertising is employed to extol the virtues of "badass weed."

The commercial featured a stoned-out hippie smoking a joint. Despite advertiser satisfaction with his declarations, the hippie keeps insisting on getting the message right, smoking joint after joint in the pursuit of perfection. He is followed by Ashley Roachclip of the Jefferson Hairpie, who attempts to offer a rebuttal to those opposed to the legalization of marijuana but is apparently too stoned out to get his argumental points together.

Fast-forward to the present: Marijuana, whether for medicinal or "recreational" purposes, is on the verge of becoming big business as many states consider following Colorado's lead, bowing both to popular demand and the ever-present need for governments to find things to tax.

Like many business interests, the MJ industry has formed a trade association. The National Cannabis Industry Association is pledged to fight the good fight, pushing on the state and federal levels for elimination of many of the barriers that currently prevent big MJ from joining big liquor and big tobacco as cash cows.

These barriers are many. As I pointed out in a February MJ blog, current law makes it difficult for banks to provide financing (or even leases or checking accounts) for "illegal" businesses like the marijuana trade. In addition, federal tax law makes it impossible for MJ vendors, both legal and illegal, to deduct ordinary business expenses.

I guess for this reason I should be glad that Michael Correia beat out Ashley Roachclip for the post of the industry association's first full-time professional lobbyist. A character Cheech & Chong would have had a hard time not satirizing, Correia is the anti-Roachclip. Described by the Washington Post as a conservative Republican by inclination, he admits to smoking the stuff about a dozen times as a teenager.

"That's news to me," his mother, Joanne, was quoted as saying. "If he ever smoked it, I don't thing we were aware of it. But if he did, he got past it, obviously. Now he doesn't even drink coffee."

But, in appearance if nothing else, Correia, now 44, offers up the classic image of the lobbyist. Prowling around Capitol Hill in a suit and tie, one could be forgiven for mistaking him for a chemical industry spokesman. Instead, since late last year Correia (whose last gig was with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, a group, which, among other things, has helped write tough drug sentencing laws) has been serving as the new face of the cannabis industry in Washington.

That this face is vastly different from the old hippie personification of marijuana is apparent if you look at it. I suppose that is a good thing for those of us who want to see the weed legalized, a worthy goal that eluded Cheech & Chong's best comedic efforts.

And he has his work cut out for him. His job is to persuade lawmakers to do change the tax code to lessen the burden on MJ companies and to give these businesses access to banks. This job requires not a stoner but a suit.

Still, it is with a twinge of nostalgia that I view the latest developments on the MJ political front. The vinyl Cheech & Chong recordings of decades ago may have been satirical, but their vision of the future has proven to be less hilarious in the present. Many high-schoolers, or so I'm told, in the 1970s wore out the grooves in these recordings as they exercised their own version of the "pursuit of happiness."

Many of us, unlike Correia, who claims to have quit the stuff, have continued to inhale throughout the intervening decades. Legitimate commerce is on the verge of catching up with us, and the result is a commercial vision which, while not completely unlike the Acapulco Gold Filters take on things, is decidedly less funny.

But whether this latest character to join the ranks of those lobbying Congress is funny is beside the point. Whichever companies wind up taking over the MJ trade, there is potentially big money to be made (and taxes to be collected) off of a habit enjoying widespread acceptance in the U.S. And this is no laughing matter.