By contrast, there are 20 other states to have decriminalized marijuana-related offenses such as small-quantity marijuana possession, cultivation, and transfer. 

Do you want to decide the future of legal cannabis in your city and state? Or do you want your government to perpetuate a failed system that encourages the illegal market, puts a strain on taxpayers, and allows unsafe products to fall into the hands of consumers? Even if you don’t particularly care about cannabis, we can all agree that protecting the public from illegal, unregulated, and unsafe products is a public health concern. We need to take action through common-sense legalization and regulation. If that isn’t reason enough, let me tell you why you should care about eliminating the illegal market to support legal, law-abiding cannabis business owners, and the plethora of benefits they provide. By the end of this video, we hope you will join our movement today.

The fact is that cannabis sales and consumption are not going away, regardless of whether or not those sales are illegal and offer no economic benefit to our communities or if they are legal, safe, and provide a flow of tax dollars into city coffers for community services that benefit ALL citizens.

As of 2023, 22 states along with Washington, D.C. and Guam, have legalized the recreational adult use of marijuana. By contrast, there are 20 other states to have decriminalized marijuana-related offenses such as small-quantity marijuana possession, cultivation, and transfer.

In California, taxes generated by legal cannabis businesses accounted for $91 billion last fiscal year, supporting essential local services such as transportation, public safety and health, libraries, schools, social services, and natural resource management programs. This is all done through the distribution of tax dollars going directly to local communities.

But there’s a catch! Many states, like California, have empowered local governments to fully ban legal cannabis businesses from their cities or municipalities. Why does this matter, you may ask? Isn’t it a good thing for our local officials to decide if they want to allow legal cannabis businesses in their city?

The answer is NO, and here’s why:

1.) Cannabis businesses are ALWAYS going to operate in cities regardless of their legal status. Historically, we know prohibition and the War on Drugs only perpetuated the growth of the illegal market, filled our prisons with non-violent offenders (often through racially motivated arrests), put unsafe, unregulated products in the hands of the public, and expended government resources, which took away funds from vital programs like childcare, medical, and education.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), enforcing cannabis prohibition laws costs taxpayers approximately $3.6 billion annually. This means over three billion dollars of tax revenue can be reclaimed each year by simply ending cannabis prohibition.

2.) In states like California, where cannabis businesses are legal, local cities have taken the choice away from the voters to enact arbitrary bans or nonsensical tax, licensure, and regulatory schemes that empower illegal operators; killing the legal industry. Regardless of bans, many cities lack the funding and mechanisms to shut down illegal enterprises efficiently enough to eliminate the illegal market at large. This also puts a burden on cities with legal programs, as illegal operators can become more competitive with their pricing without having to be accountable for taxes, safety, or quality control. Again, the market for cannabis is not going away whether a city decides to ban the industry or not.

In California, voters have spoken. The industry is legal. Cities that ban legal businesses are complicit with the illicit market, putting a crippling financial strain on our communities and causing a devastating risk to our public safety and health.

We are partnering with national and local groups, like the National Organization for Cannabis Compliance, to organize voter-driven initiatives and petitions across the nation. Data from the existing legal market shows that we must take voter action on cannabis policy in the following ways:

1.) Lower tax rates
2.) Standardize accounting processes to align with any other business type.
3.) Access to mainstream banking and financial services.
4.) Eliminate bans, lotteries, license caps, and unfair monopolies.
5.) Regulation should be no more complex than tobacco, alcohol, and gun stores.
6.) Offer voter-driven initiatives – eliminate bureaucrats in the process.
7.) Streamlined licensing and timely processing of applications.
8.) Eliminate barriers of entry for the average citizen.
9.) Reform social-equity programs to meet their intended goals.

But this all starts with YOU. We are gathering data through voter surveys and outreach that we are using to put forward ballot initiatives in every city in America to END BANS on legal cannabis businesses and reform cannabis laws to favor legal operator growth. Our goal is to hit every state we can, starting with your city, with legislation that standardizes adult-use cannabis programs for the eventual passage of federal reform bills on the national level.

Please fill out our easy survey and consider making a donation or requesting a consultation about how you can get involved in shaping the legal industry. Our team includes professionals with 100+ years of combined experience in various industries from cannabis, real estate, legal, financing, security, lobbying, and more. We can do all of this together.