Hylton writes: "The two largest marijuana companies for now - Privateer
Holdings, the Bob Marley label, and Diego Pellicer, the would-be Starbucks -
have both embarked on long-term strategies to develop massive growing
operations, while also maintaining a short-term caution in light of the
federal ban."
Willie Nelson. (photo: Martin Schoeller/NY Mag)
Willie Nelson's Crusade to Stop Big Pot
By Wil S. Hylton, New York Magazine
02 November 15
Backstage at Farm Aid is a hidden city. You enter through a guarded gate
just north of the concert pavilion, leaving behind the woozy crowd and
vendors hawking organic snacks, then you drift through a gaggle of agitated
assistants, past the roadies bustling about, and you follow a trail of golf
carts heading for the residential district, where dozens of tour buses have
been crammed together to accommodate the sheer number of headlining acts,
with John Mellencamps people over here and Neil Youngs entourage there,
with Dave Matthews and Kacey Musgraves and Jack Johnson each presiding over
a small convoy of RVs, which you slip between and among, ducking down the
narrow alleys, until at last you burst into the enormous plaza that
surrounds the Honeysuckle Rose.
The Rose is parked just slightly akimbo, with its front wheels cocked to one
side. It is a 45-foot Prevost X3 with a 334-foot wheelbase, which is the
same model used by President Obama during the 2012 campaign or, to put it
another way, its just about the sweetest ride a tour bus can be. Unlike the
president, Willie Nelson doesnt require a lot of armored plating. He keeps
an old Winchester rifle onboard, tucked into a cabinet over his bed, but
otherwise the custom details of the Rose tend to be personal, pragmatic
touches, like the twin biodiesel generators he installed in the under-floor
compartment, with a special exhaust line that runs through the roof to avoid
drowning the bus in fumes. Today, a crisp September afternoon under the
yawning Illinois sky, there is a far more pleasant smoke wafting about the
plaza billowing, in fact, from every crack and gap in the carapace of the
Rose. Thats because Willie is onboard, wailing on a monster spliff.
Well, not just a spliff. More like a medley of miscellaneous marijuana. At
82, Nelson is a slightly shrunken figure, just over five-foot-six, with
ramrod posture and shoulders so abrupt that his black T-shirt appears to be
suspended from a pair of broomsticks. His long gray hair frames a lean gray
face as rutted as a distant moon, and he is sitting, as he usually does, in
a chair beside the refrigerator and cabinets where he and his wife, Annie,
hoard the stash. Annie is perched a few feet away, at the end of a long
bench, tousling the hair of their 26-year-old son, Lukas, who is lying down
with his head in her lap. The décor of the Rose is what you might call
Seventies Luxe. Theres a lot of dark leather piled into pleats and dark
wood carved into extravagant spindles. On the table in front of Willie is: a
vase full of pencils, an orange lighter, a smattering of pre-rolled doobies,
an ashtray cluttered with the remainders of joints gone by, a dish of loose
cannabis caked with kief, three slim vaporizers of marijuana extract, and a
deck of black playing cards printed with the words WILLIES RESERVE in
saloon lettering.
Nelson leans back in his chair and pulls a long draw from the burning
spliff. This is good weed, he mutters quietly, reaching up to crack the
window. Outside, the stage is just a few yards away, but facing the wrong
direction; the muddled music filters onto the bus like the noise of a wet
highway. Nelson stares out the window as if noticing the concert for the
first time. Its the 30th anniversary of Farm Aid, and sometimes he cant
believe its still happening. I was dumb enough to think one or two of
these would be enough, he says. That all those smart guys in Washington
would get together and work out the problems.
The problems in American farming 30 years ago were as intractable as they
were abundant. Trapped in a cycle of rising interest rates, plunging
property values, volatile markets, and drought, thousands of families found
themselves sliding into bankruptcy and foreclosure. The suicide rate among
midwestern farmers surged to twice the national average, and it sometimes
seemed as if whole communities in the Corn Belt were either broke or dying.
We were losing like 300 farmers a week, Nelson says now.
The idea to throw a benefit concert first hit him on July 13, 1985. He was
in Philadelphia to play the Live Aid fund-raiser for victims of the famine
in Ethiopia, when Bob Dylan took the stage and suggested that some of the
proceeds might be shared with U.S. farmers. The organizer of the concert,
Bob Geldof, dismissed that proposal out of hand, later saying that it was
crass, stupid, and nationalistic to conflate the two issues. But the whole
thing got Nelson thinking. A few weeks later, he was at the Illinois State
Fair having a bowl of chili and a beer with the governor, Jim Thompson, when
he brought up the idea again. A month later, they pulled it off at a stadium
in Champaign. The performers included B.B. King, Johnny Cash, and Loretta
Lynn. They raised $9 million that year. Theyve been at it ever since.
Things are a little better now, Nelson says, twirling a black vaporizer
pen between his fingers. People have started thinking about buying and
growing sustainably.
In fact, the impact of Farm Aid is difficult to convey. The past three
decades have seen a radical shift in American attitudes about food. The
project of supporting local farmers is by no means finished business, but if
the modern supermarket tells us anything, it is that trend lines are going
Nelsons way. Tart little ugly apples and honking tomatoes have pushed their
way onto shelves once dominated by the produce Borg; the organic label has
become de rigueur to a whole swath of consumers; and the forces of Big
Agriculture have, like Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, fallen into widespread
disrepute. It is easy to forget that just 30 years ago, basically nobody was
talking about these things, and that Nelson as much as anyone helped to
mobilize the local-food movement.
But now, as he enters the final phase of his life, Nelson is gearing up for
a different battle. He has been a vocal advocate of marijuana legalization
for more than half a century, but he has watched the last few years unfold
with a combination of joy and dread. Even as the country has softened its
stance toward marijuana, a legion of large corporations has gathered to
dominate the legal market. Nelson figures he has at least one good fight
left. In what may be his last political act, he is declaring war on Big Pot.
By way of first principles, let us pause to establish that legalization is
here. That fight is over; legal weed has arrived; all that remains is for
the last chips to fall. Some form of marijuana has already been approved in
23 states, and roughly 80 percent of the American public currently favors
medicinal use. Support for recreational pot has also been rising over the
past decade, with more people in favor of full legalization than against it
for the first time in 2011. The following year, Colorado and Washington
became the first two states to permit recreational use: It is now perfectly
legal in both places to shamble into a dispensary, plunk down a stack of
crinkly bills, and purchase a bag of high-grade weed for no loftier purpose
than to get high. Last year, Oregon and Alaska approved similar measures,
and this month, the bellwether state of Ohio will vote on a proposal to join
them. Next year, at least five additional states will ¬consider the same
question, while another dozen are working on comparable ballot initiatives,
and in 15 states and Washington, D.C., possession of the drug for personal
use is no longer a crime. The consensus among doctors has returned to where
it stood eight decades ago, when the American Medical Association loudly
opposed the decision to make pot illegal in the first place. Even the
federal government is beginning to change course: Early this year, President
Obama predicted that if enough states decriminalize marijuana, Congress
might remove it from the list of Schedule I drugs, and he has informed
officials in Washington and Colorado that the Justice Department will not
prosecute anyone who complies with state laws.
In the face of all this, investors have naturally begun piling into pot. A
race is on to establish the first truly national marijuana brand. The most
visible contender in this contest is probably the company Privateer
Holdings, which was founded by three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, one of
whom had never smoked pot in his life but who somehow managed to persuade
Bob Marleys family to license his name and image to their packaging. This
spring, Privateer completed its second capital drive for a total of $82
million in start-up cash. Or maybe the rise of corporate marijuana is better
illustrated by the tech millionaire Jamen Shively, who announced plans in
2013 to create a chain of pot shops modeled on Starbucks that would mint
more millionaires than Microsoft acknowledging at one point, We are Big
Marijuana.
Even the most ardent advocates of legalization have been troubled by the
rise of Big Pot. The legalization movement is organized largely around
issues of social justice, and for activists who have spent decades railing
against the disproportionate impact of the drug war on poor communities, it
has been unsettling to watch legalization engender a new slate of economic
disparities. Alison Holcomb, who wrote the initiative to legalize
recreational marijuana in Washington State, told me that a cannabis industry
dominated by large corporations would threaten the core values of the
legalization movement. It looks a lot like the concentration of capital
that we have seen with Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco, she said. I think
thats problematic for cannabis-law reformers, because it plays into our
oppositions strongest argument. Holcomb pointed to the initiative in Ohio
this month, where a consortium of large marijuana investors has spent about
$15 million to promote legalization, while opponents have spent less than $1
million and focused not on legalization itself, but on the fact that the new
law would permit only ten of those large producers to operate in the state.
The arrival of corporate marijuana also raises public-health concerns. Pot
smokers might prefer to imagine their plants being raised on a sunny organic
farm near Boulder, but Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, points out that when big companies grow
things, they tend to rely on the chemical methods of industrial agriculture.
For the average little black-market grower, its done on such a small scale
that theyre not even using pesticides, Stroup told me. But when youre
investing millions of dollars in a large cultivation center, you can bet
they are not going to take the risk of their crop getting wiped out by mold
or mildew or insects.
Already, industrial pesticides have turned up on thousands of legal
marijuana plants, but no one knows exactly how dangerous this might be for
consumers. Nearly all of the standards, studies, and guidelines for American
agriculture not to mention enforcement are provided by the federal
government. Before a pesticide can be applied to any other crop, for
example, the Environmental Protection Agency must specifically approve the
use of that chemical on the plant in question. As various crops proceed
through harvest, production, packaging, and distribution, a host of other
federal agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and the National
Institutes of Health, also play critical roles in defining safety standards.
But under the federal ban on marijuana, none of these agencies has engaged
with the pot industry in a meaningful way or conducted the usual studies.
Because there are no pesticides currently approved for marijuana, many pot
growers have been using whatever chemical they like. Whitney Cranshaw, a
professor of entomology at Colorado State University and one of the states
leading experts on pesticide application, told me that some of the chemicals
being sprayed on pot plants these days are so noxious they will make your
skin crawl.
The Feds have completely abrogated their responsibility and let the
situation devolve into chaos, Cranshaw said. Avid is being used; the other
big one is Floramite; and the one I really dont get is imidacloprid, which
I cant even understand why you would use on this crop it actually makes
the mites worse. But the growers dont know what theyre doing. Early this
year, officials in Colorado discovered that 60,000 legal marijuana plants at
a growing operation in Denver had been sprayed with another pesticide,
myclobutanil. Officials placed the plants into quarantine, but when testing
showed that the concentration had diminished, they released the crop for
distribution. Since then, officials in Colorado have issued a list of
pesticides that growers are permitted to use, but Cranshaw told me the list
is based more on guesswork than on testing. Theres almost zero data on
inhalation exposure to pesticide at high temperature, he said. Those
studies have to be done.
Without the federal government bringing its regulatory and scientific
expertise to the emerging pot market, some advocates have begun to wonder if
local officials can ever rise to the task. The mechanisms of state
regulatory offices, they say, are not designed to replace a massive
institution like the U.S. Department of Agriculture or Health and Human
Services. Theres only so much that we can do, Holcomb said. Well never
be able to require everyone to comply with all the requirements that we
would like to see. Instead, she had begun to hope for a kind of deus ex
machina to appear some benevolent corporate counterweight to traditional
corporate interests. We have to find people who have large amounts of
capital and are willing to engage in socially responsible business
practices, she said, who will give the consumer a choice to say, Yeah, I
want to buy from the company that actually cares.
The first thing you notice when you smoke weed with Willie Nelson is how
much weed Willie Nelson smokes. Lots of stoners get high all day, but
Nelsons intake is stratospheric. At any given moment, he will have multiple
joints burning, along with an assortment of vapes and pipes, all of which he
seems to puff simultaneously like one of those multi¬armed Hindu gods,
whiffing and wheezing through the fog as if trying to minimize his exposure
to fresh air.
This begins to add up when you do the math. Nelson has spent the past 60
years touring the American landscape; the current version of the Honeysuckle
Rose is the fifth tour bus to bear its name; each of the buses has crossed
the country dozens, if not hundreds, of times; and even now, in his ninth
decade, Nelson spends about 150 nights each year on the road. Just about
everywhere he stops for the night, he is greeted by a welcoming party of
local growers, many of whom have been visiting him on the Rose for years and
are eager one might say determined to give him a taste of their best
grow. Nelson has developed, then, what may be the most expansive network of
marijuana suppliers in the country, and as a daily pot smoker leading the
unfettered life of a meandering troubadour whose habits are a secret to no
one, it is distinctly possible that he has smoked more high-grade weed over
the past six decades than anyone else alive.
A consequence of all this highness is that Nelsons tolerance is
supernatural. He can easily smoke 30 or 40 hits in a session and then play a
flawless two-hour show. He does not always deploy this talent toward noble
ends. He is famous for smoking new friends to oblivion and then challenging
them to a few hands of high-stakes poker. Willies game is cash-only, and
all debts must be settled at the table. This has led to stories among his
intimates of the time he refused to let Woody Harrelson leave the room until
he could deliver $40,000 in cash. It has also led to more than one folk song
about the perils of smoking with Nelson, including a Toby Keith ballad with
the refrain Ill never smoke weed with Willie again and a new jingle
introduced by Jack Johnson at Farm Aid this year whose chorus revolves
around the line Willie got me stoned and took all my money.
I first met Nelson this summer behind a casino in Atlantic City. He was
passing through town to play an outdoor concert, and I joined him on the
Honeysuckle Rose to discuss his plans to open a marijuana company and to
sample a few of his favorite strains. He had announced the new company in
March, but other than the name Willies Reserve, nobody seemed to know much
about it. There was still a lot of confusion, for example, about whether
Willies Reserve referred to a new strain of weed that Nelsons friends
had developed, or if it was a complete line of cannabis products, or maybe
he was opening a collection of retail stores where you could buy and smoke
and chill.
I confess to having approached that first meeting with some measure of
trepidation. I have spent plenty of time around weed and, like many people,
have enjoyed my share. But I am not a frequent smoker and rarely take more
than a hit or two. The prospect of crawling into Nelsons lair to consume
the strongest marijuana known to civilization, then trying to conduct a
coherent interview, did not sound especially mellow.
I spent a few weeks before the meeting in a training regimen. This began
with a nightly puff of smoke, then two per night, and then three, until
eventually I could burn a couple of joints without coming entirely apart.
Not that it really helped. On the day of our meeting, I climbed aboard the
Rose and settled into a chair opposite Nelson at the small table that I
would come to regard as his natural habitat. I guess about three minutes had
passed in small talk before he hoisted himself up, rummaged through the
overhead cabinets, and plopped back down with a pair of cardboard boxes
filled with pre-rolled joints. From the labels, I could see that one of the
packages held a strain called Sour Diesel, originally developed in Colorado,
and the other was a California varietal known as Blue Dream. Nelson handed
me one joint of each, pointing at the Sour Diesel first. Thats good
stuff, he said with a grin. Fire it up!
The taste of the weed was huge and oily, another dimension from what I was
smoking at home, and, against my better judgment, I took a long haul before
passing it back to him. Nelson pulled what seemed like the entire joint into
his lungs with a single drag, finally prying it away and croaking on the
exhale, Now lets take a couple hits off that other one and see if we can
tell the difference!
We spent the next hour burning down joints and a collection of vaporizer
cartridges filled with marijuana concentrate, but the more we smoked and
talked about smoking, the more I began to realize that Nelson knew almost
nothing about the plant. He really wasnt sure what kind of weed we were
smoking or how the various strains might differ from one another. He had
never put a cannabis seed in the ground and didnt intend to. Why should I
grow if this guy over here, or that guy, already has it? he asked. He also
didnt have much interest in the profusion of pot cookies, candies, and soft
drinks that have been turning up in the legal states. I dont like edibles
that much, he said with a shrug. I had a bad experience the first time I
did it. This was 50 years ago. I ate a bunch of cookies, and I lay there all
night thinking the flesh was falling off my bones. He wasnt even sure
about the difference between the two major forms of cannabis, indica and
sativa. These are commonly said to have different psychoactive effects, the
first being more like a narcotic and the second being more energetic, but
when I mentioned these things to Nelson, he just laughed. I havent become
all that expert on that, he said. The way I look at it is: Im either high
or Im not.
This discovery frankly thrilled me. Too many pot smokers these days have
gotten fussy about their weed. In the same way that modern foodies have
eroded the simplicity of homegrown food, leaving behind its rustic roots for
a universe of prickly, esoteric greens and incomprehensibly expensive
mushrooms, turning local food into a temple for snobs and picky eaters, I
have noticed a similar tendency creeping into the conversation around pot
with inflated descriptions of bud density, room-note, fruity undertones, and
heritage genetics, usually proffered in the grandiose vocabulary of the
dismal jerk who flips out over wine. Nelson was after something simpler. He
just liked getting high. He may be one of the most famous stoners on Earth,
with a tolerance to fell giants, but he is not, strictly speaking, a
marijuana connoisseur.
As we began to discuss his plans for Willies Reserve, I realized how
important this fact was. Willie being Willie, he could throw out a punch
line to explain why he wanted to open the pot business, usually delivering
some version of the line Ive smoked enough and I want to give back. But
the truth was something deeper and more important. He really hadnt started
the company for his own amusement, or to make money, of which he has plenty.
The truth was that he wanted to preserve his legendary stash to keep it
clean, keep his growers in business, and keep Big Pot off his turf. He
wanted to protect the plant he smokes every day from the corporate influence
hes been fighting all his life.
One story in particular illustrated this. Last year, when a group of
investors first approached Nelson with the idea to start a pot company, he
invited the groups leader, Andrew Davison, to a meeting at his ranch in
Texas. Davison told me that he arrived for the meeting at 11 on a Saturday
morning, and as he set up his laptop on Nelsons kitchen table, he planned
to pitch the marijuana company as a straightforward business that would tap
into Nelsons authenticity and reputation as a lifelong stoner.
I basically ran through a PowerPoint what we think the opportunity is,
how we go about it, the next steps, Davison recalled. And at the end,
Willie looked at me and said, Thats great, but I want to tell you my
values. And so he proceeded to lay them out. He talked about social
justice, and growing up on a dirt floor, and his connection to all sorts of
different disadvantaged communities, and he pointed out that there are
plenty of enterprising black entrepreneur kids who are in jail for doing
what were doing. Then he said, I really believe in the environmental
aspect of this. Its a great way to revitalize small farms, and I want to
make sure that any product we grow is as clean as we can make it and that,
wherever possible, were trying to lower the environmental impact of our
operations.
Davison laughed as he remembered the conversation, but it had forced him to
change course. He had come to the ranch with a business proposal and walked
away with a social agenda. It was evident that Willie didnt just wake up
one day and say, Hey, I could sell my likeness on a vape pen and make some
money, Davison said. Which he could have done! But this was more
important to him.
Legal marijuana is the fastest-growing industry in the United States, with
74 percent growth in 2014, according to a recent study by the ArcView Group,
a Silicon Valley investment research firm. Last year, it generated $2.7
billion in sales and delivered more than $200 million in tax revenue to the
legal states. In Colorado alone, the $88 million raised from pot was more
than double that from alcohol.
For producers of the plant, these state taxes are only a light beginning.
Federal law poses a far more onerous tax burden. Thats because marijuana
falls under an obscure section of the tax code, which makes it nearly
impossible for companies to report their earnings like a normal business.
Among other things, they may not deduct their operating expenses, such as
rental space, employee salaries, and the cost of growing equipment, without
which some producers are paying an effective federal income tax of 70
percent. Many large banks have also refused to let marijuana companies open
accounts, leading to an industry awash in cash, obscure accounting methods,
and armed guards. The legal minefield is just one of the reasons that Big
Tobacco companies like Altria and R. J. Reynolds have said they are not
planning to enter the Green Rush anytime soon. Wall Street, however, has
been far more willing to experiment with marijuana, and several investment
firms, like Viridian Capital Advisors, have sprung up to tap the burgeoning
market.
The two largest marijuana companies for now Privateer Holdings, the Bob
Marley label, and Diego Pellicer, the would-be Starbucks have both
embarked on long-term strategies to develop massive growing operations,
while also maintaining a short-term caution in light of the federal ban. At
Diego Pellicer, this has meant a plunge into, of all things, real estate. As
the companys CEO, Ron Throgmartin, explained this, Diego Pellicers core
business at the moment is to acquire retail space and then lease it to local
pot companies. We do not, and will not, profit from the sale of marijuana
until its federally legal to do so, Throgmartin said. As we wait, this
company stands on solid real-estate principles. Those real-estate
principles turn out to involve a peculiar contract with tenants: The company
leases space to those who are willing to let Diego Pellicer design their
store layout and who will allow Diego Pellicer to take over their store in
the future. They are just a subtenant, Throgmartin explained. We will
secure the real estate, we will lease the real estate, we will do the build
out, and we have a future-acquisition agreement that allows us to roll their
operation into Diego Pellicer Worldwide. When it becomes federally legal to
do so, we have the ability to acquire them overnight. For its part,
Privateer Holdings has yet to issue any Marley Natural marijuana, but the
company has invested heavily in the ancillary markets buying the prominent
website Leafly, which is a kind of Yelp for marijuana reviews, and preparing
a rollout of Marley swag, including body lotions and handmade accessories
adorned with the corporate logo. During the gold rush, there were people
who dug for gold, and people who sold picks and shovels, Throgmartin said.
Theyre selling picks and shovels. But with an eye to the long-term,
Privateer has also purchased the Canadian company Tilray, which grows
medical marijuana in a 60,000-square-foot facility in British Columbia.
Whenever the U.S. federal ban is lifted, the company will be able to source
its cannabis from a similar facility in the States.
Meanwhile, the companies that are already producing pot at the state level
can be divided roughly into two groups: Those who are trying to grow premium
marijuana for a boutique market, and those who want to emulate the mass
production and high-volume ambitions of Big Pot. Trying to divine the
difference can be confusing in any given dispensary, one is likely to
encounter dozens of labels promising clean and natural weed, but there
is no uniform definition for what these words mean. Some companies, like
Avitas Agriculture in northern Washington and Maggies Farm in Colorado,
have adopted strict internal standards, rejecting noxious chemical additives
and relying on locally sourced organic supplies, but companies willing to
subject themselves to these exacting requirements often find themselves
adrift in a market that mandates nothing comparable from their rivals.
Profiteers have come in with all different kinds of motivations in this
industry, a founder of Avitas, Adam Smith, told me. People are trying to
make a quick buck, creating dirty grows and dumping their weed on the
market.
Davison, who is now the CEO of Willies Reserve, had been wrestling with all
of these issues, and I met up with him at Farm Aid to hear what he had in
mind. He is a tall, athletic man with a ready smile and the sort of
mountain-preppy vibe that one encounters in the pages of a Patagonia
catalogue. Before starting Willies Reserve, he worked for the clothing
companies Pearl Izumi and Crocs and served on the advisory council of the
National Outdoor Leadership School. At Farm Aid, he was presiding over a far
less wholesome enterprise, if no less fun: A few slots away from Willies
bus, he had parked a tasting room for Willies Reserve.
That bus turned out to be a prior version of the Honeysuckle Rose, but in at
least one respect, the old bus had a leg up on the new one. Nelsons had a
lot of weed; Davisons had little else. There was a riot of the stuff:
stacks of perfectly rolled joints with cardboard filters and twisty tips,
Mason jars crammed with cannabis of all shades and scents and varietals, and
an assortment of tin cans brimming with monstrous buds the size of a babys
arm. There were convoluted water pipes of blown glass, a stack of cocktail
napkins printed with the words PUFF. PUFF. GIVE, and, propped against the
wall, a sign that said WILLIES RESERVE IS FOR SHARING above the hashtag
#sharethestash as if rolling around the country with mountains of
marijuana was nothing to keep discreet.
I took a seat on the bus as Davison packed a bowl with a particularly
lime-hued varietal, then we retired to a sofa to chat about his plans for
the new company. He acknowledged at the outset that building a national
company in accord with Nelsons standards has been vexing. In addition to
all the peculiar problems that face a small pot grower, a litany of other
obstacles confront a national brand. Foremost among these is the problem of
interstate transport. The Obama administration has been clear that it will
not allow producers to distribute pot across state lines, which makes it
virtually impossible for Willies Reserve to market a consistent product
nationwide. A grower in Colorado might develop a mesmerizing new strain of
weed, but there is no legal way to reproduce it anywhere else: No plant,
seed, clone, or cutting can leave the state.
It means you have to look for alternative ways to set up the company
structure, Davison said. The business model he was developing, he
explained, is a hub and ever-growing wheel. By this he meant that the
brand will consist of a national holding company and will form partnerships
with smaller companies to manage the individual states. Unlike the model at
Diego Pellicer, Davison has no interest in acquiring those local companies
and prefers for them to be small owners operating privately. To maintain
consistency, he will establish standards for potency, environmental impact,
and organic growing methods, and in exchange for adherence to these
guidelines, Willies Reserve will provide the growers with access to a
network of internal support systems, including advice on how to organize and
operate a small business.
We define the processes in detail, Davison said. Whether its grow
processes, genetic processes, production processes all of that is going to
be defined by us. He imagines the company, ultimately, as a network of
mutually supportive growers, bound together like a cooperative and committed
to a shared standard. Using the word standards is kind of generic and
mundane, he said. But in that word are a lot of proprietary approaches
that are designed to enable the growers to avoid a lot of the business
hassles that are intrinsically difficult in this industry.
This was essentially the business that Holcomb, the author of Washingtons
legalization bill, had been hoping someone would create what she described
to me as the empowerment of local, small businesses and giving them the
opportunity to participate in the marketplace. Whether such a business
could survive was another question, but Davison told me that market research
suggested they were tapping a deep vein. When we did our quantitative
research, one of the things that glaringly jumped out is that consumers want
this, he said. They want to know where the product comes from, they want
to know its clean and cared for, they want to know it was local grown and
that it has a connection to their community. It just so happens that it fits
perfectly with the regulatory requirement, and, more importantly, it fits
with Willie.
Its also something that investors have bought into. As we sat together at
Farm Aid, Davison had just closed the companys first major deal: After ten
months of negotiation, he had secured several million dollars in financial
support from a cannabis investment firm, Tuatara Capital, whose chairman,
Mark Zittman, and chief investment officer, Al Foreman, told me they were
entirely onboard with Davisons do-gooder approach. At some point, we
believe there will be an agency tasked with regulating safety standards,
Zittman said. And when those standards are put in place, our goal is for
Willies Reserve to be well inside standards. Other companies, Foreman
added, wont be ready when the federal government steps in. As standards
come into play, and more rules and regulations become common, there are a
number of operators in the industry who will have to change their basic
blueprint, he said.
All of the principals expected Willies Reserve to be in stores by the first
of January. Weve got everything in place, Davison said. Now we get to
turn on the machine.
Back on the Honeysuckle Rose, I ask Nelson what he hopes the new company can
accomplish. He starts to say something, then Annie chips in. If you believe
in the free market, then a decentralized market is free, she says. And
with a free market, people have a choice to buy clean herb. Theres some
over here, and some over there, and the market can demand what people want.
I mention that this sounds a lot like the goal of Farm Aid: to buttress
small farmers and sustainable agriculture so that customers have a healthy
option. Willie nods. Weve had to be very careful because of the tax status
with Farm Aid, he says, referring to the fact that Farm Aid is a nonprofit
organization and could risk its standing by breaking the law. We dont want
to do anything thats going to piss anybody off or give the federal guys any
reason to come in and take Farm Aid money. Itll all come together
eventually, but it has to happen legally.
He takes a long drag off his vaporizer and stares out the window again.
These problems could have been fixed on the first day, he says finally,
but you have a lot of bureaucracy and bullshit, a lot of big corporations.
So thats what were up against. Theyre trying to monopolize it all. Thats
horseshit. That aint right, and well do everything we can to keep that
from happening.
Its getting late, and Nelson has to prepare for the final set of the night,
an assortment of old-time gospel and country featuring all of the Farm Aid
musicians at once. As I turn to leave, he stands up with a grin and offers
me a massive joint. Here, he says, slipping it into my shirt pocket. Have
a little Reserve for the road.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Willie Nelson. (photo: Martin Schoeller/NY Mag)
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/willie-nelson-crusade-stop-big-
pot.htmlhttp://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/10/willie-nelson-crusade-s
top-big-pot.html
Willie Nelson's Crusade to Stop Big Pot
By Wil S. Hylton, New York Magazine
02 November 15
ackstage at Farm Aid is a hidden city. You enter through a guarded gate
just north of the concert pavilion, leaving behind the woozy crowd and
vendors hawking organic snacks, then you drift through a gaggle of agitated
assistants, past the roadies bustling about, and you follow a trail of golf
carts heading for the residential district, where dozens of tour buses have
been crammed together to accommodate the sheer number of headlining acts,
with John Mellencamps people over here and Neil Youngs entourage there,
with Dave Matthews and Kacey Musgraves and Jack Johnson each presiding over
a small convoy of RVs, which you slip between and among, ducking down the
narrow alleys, until at last you burst into the enormous plaza that
surrounds the Honeysuckle Rose.
The Rose is parked just slightly akimbo, with its front wheels cocked to one
side. It is a 45-foot Prevost X3 with a 334-foot wheelbase, which is the
same model used by President Obama during the 2012 campaign or, to put it
another way, its just about the sweetest ride a tour bus can be. Unlike the
president, Willie Nelson doesnt require a lot of armored plating. He keeps
an old Winchester rifle onboard, tucked into a cabinet over his bed, but
otherwise the custom details of the Rose tend to be personal, pragmatic
touches, like the twin biodiesel generators he installed in the under-floor
compartment, with a special exhaust line that runs through the roof to avoid
drowning the bus in fumes. Today, a crisp September afternoon under the
yawning Illinois sky, there is a far more pleasant smoke wafting about the
plaza billowing, in fact, from every crack and gap in the carapace of the
Rose. Thats because Willie is onboard, wailing on a monster spliff.
Well, not just a spliff. More like a medley of miscellaneous marijuana. At
82, Nelson is a slightly shrunken figure, just over five-foot-six, with
ramrod posture and shoulders so abrupt that his black T-shirt appears to be
suspended from a pair of broomsticks. His long gray hair frames a lean gray
face as rutted as a distant moon, and he is sitting, as he usually does, in
a chair beside the refrigerator and cabinets where he and his wife, Annie,
hoard the stash. Annie is perched a few feet away, at the end of a long
bench, tousling the hair of their 26-year-old son, Lukas, who is lying down
with his head in her lap. The décor of the Rose is what you might call
Seventies Luxe. Theres a lot of dark leather piled into pleats and dark
wood carved into extravagant spindles. On the table in front of Willie is: a
vase full of pencils, an orange lighter, a smattering of pre-rolled doobies,
an ashtray cluttered with the remainders of joints gone by, a dish of loose
cannabis caked with kief, three slim vaporizers of marijuana extract, and a
deck of black playing cards printed with the words WILLIES RESERVE in
saloon lettering.
Nelson leans back in his chair and pulls a long draw from the burning
spliff. This is good weed, he mutters quietly, reaching up to crack the
window. Outside, the stage is just a few yards away, but facing the wrong
direction; the muddled music filters onto the bus like the noise of a wet
highway. Nelson stares out the window as if noticing the concert for the
first time. Its the 30th anniversary of Farm Aid, and sometimes he cant
believe its still happening. I was dumb enough to think one or two of
these would be enough, he says. That all those smart guys in Washington
would get together and work out the problems.
The problems in American farming 30 years ago were as intractable as they
were abundant. Trapped in a cycle of rising interest rates, plunging
property values, volatile markets, and drought, thousands of families found
themselves sliding into bankruptcy and foreclosure. The suicide rate among
midwestern farmers surged to twice the national average, and it sometimes
seemed as if whole communities in the Corn Belt were either broke or dying.
We were losing like 300 farmers a week, Nelson says now.
The idea to throw a benefit concert first hit him on July 13, 1985. He was
in Philadelphia to play the Live Aid fund-raiser for victims of the famine
in Ethiopia, when Bob Dylan took the stage and suggested that some of the
proceeds might be shared with U.S. farmers. The organizer of the concert,
Bob Geldof, dismissed that proposal out of hand, later saying that it was
crass, stupid, and nationalistic to conflate the two issues. But the whole
thing got Nelson thinking. A few weeks later, he was at the Illinois State
Fair having a bowl of chili and a beer with the governor, Jim Thompson, when
he brought up the idea again. A month later, they pulled it off at a stadium
in Champaign. The performers included B.B. King, Johnny Cash, and Loretta
Lynn. They raised $9 million that year. Theyve been at it ever since.
Things are a little better now, Nelson says, twirling a black vaporizer
pen between his fingers. People have started thinking about buying and
growing sustainably.
In fact, the impact of Farm Aid is difficult to convey. The past three
decades have seen a radical shift in American attitudes about food. The
project of supporting local farmers is by no means finished business, but if
the modern supermarket tells us anything, it is that trend lines are going
Nelsons way. Tart little ugly apples and honking tomatoes have pushed their
way onto shelves once dominated by the produce Borg; the organic label has
become de rigueur to a whole swath of consumers; and the forces of Big
Agriculture have, like Big Tobacco and Big Pharma, fallen into widespread
disrepute. It is easy to forget that just 30 years ago, basically nobody was
talking about these things, and that Nelson as much as anyone helped to
mobilize the local-food movement.
But now, as he enters the final phase of his life, Nelson is gearing up for
a different battle. He has been a vocal advocate of marijuana legalization
for more than half a century, but he has watched the last few years unfold
with a combination of joy and dread. Even as the country has softened its
stance toward marijuana, a legion of large corporations has gathered to
dominate the legal market. Nelson figures he has at least one good fight
left. In what may be his last political act, he is declaring war on Big Pot.
By way of first principles, let us pause to establish that legalization is
here. That fight is over; legal weed has arrived; all that remains is for
the last chips to fall. Some form of marijuana has already been approved in
23 states, and roughly 80 percent of the American public currently favors
medicinal use. Support for recreational pot has also been rising over the
past decade, with more people in favor of full legalization than against it
for the first time in 2011. The following year, Colorado and Washington
became the first two states to permit recreational use: It is now perfectly
legal in both places to shamble into a dispensary, plunk down a stack of
crinkly bills, and purchase a bag of high-grade weed for no loftier purpose
than to get high. Last year, Oregon and Alaska approved similar measures,
and this month, the bellwether state of Ohio will vote on a proposal to join
them. Next year, at least five additional states will consider the same
question, while another dozen are working on comparable ballot initiatives,
and in 15 states and Washington, D.C., possession of the drug for personal
use is no longer a crime. The consensus among doctors has returned to where
it stood eight decades ago, when the American Medical Association loudly
opposed the decision to make pot illegal in the first place. Even the
federal government is beginning to change course: Early this year, President
Obama predicted that if enough states decriminalize marijuana, Congress
might remove it from the list of Schedule I drugs, and he has informed
officials in Washington and Colorado that the Justice Department will not
prosecute anyone who complies with state laws.
In the face of all this, investors have naturally begun piling into pot. A
race is on to establish the first truly national marijuana brand. The most
visible contender in this contest is probably the company Privateer
Holdings, which was founded by three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, one of
whom had never smoked pot in his life but who somehow managed to persuade
Bob Marleys family to license his name and image to their packaging. This
spring, Privateer completed its second capital drive for a total of $82
million in start-up cash. Or maybe the rise of corporate marijuana is better
illustrated by the tech millionaire Jamen Shively, who announced plans in
2013 to create a chain of pot shops modeled on Starbucks that would mint
more millionaires than Microsoft acknowledging at one point, We are Big
Marijuana.
Even the most ardent advocates of legalization have been troubled by the
rise of Big Pot. The legalization movement is organized largely around
issues of social justice, and for activists who have spent decades railing
against the disproportionate impact of the drug war on poor communities, it
has been unsettling to watch legalization engender a new slate of economic
disparities. Alison Holcomb, who wrote the initiative to legalize
recreational marijuana in Washington State, told me that a cannabis industry
dominated by large corporations would threaten the core values of the
legalization movement. It looks a lot like the concentration of capital
that we have seen with Big Alcohol and Big Tobacco, she said. I think
thats problematic for cannabis-law reformers, because it plays into our
oppositions strongest argument. Holcomb pointed to the initiative in Ohio
this month, where a consortium of large marijuana investors has spent about
$15 million to promote legalization, while opponents have spent less than $1
million and focused not on legalization itself, but on the fact that the new
law would permit only ten of those large producers to operate in the state.
The arrival of corporate marijuana also raises public-health concerns. Pot
smokers might prefer to imagine their plants being raised on a sunny organic
farm near Boulder, but Keith Stroup, who founded the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, points out that when big companies grow
things, they tend to rely on the chemical methods of industrial agriculture.
For the average little black-market grower, its done on such a small scale
that theyre not even using pesticides, Stroup told me. But when youre
investing millions of dollars in a large cultivation center, you can bet
they are not going to take the risk of their crop getting wiped out by mold
or mildew or insects.
Already, industrial pesticides have turned up on thousands of legal
marijuana plants, but no one knows exactly how dangerous this might be for
consumers. Nearly all of the standards, studies, and guidelines for American
agriculture not to mention enforcement are provided by the federal
government. Before a pesticide can be applied to any other crop, for
example, the Environmental Protection Agency must specifically approve the
use of that chemical on the plant in question. As various crops proceed
through harvest, production, packaging, and distribution, a host of other
federal agencies, like the Food and Drug Administration and the National
Institutes of Health, also play critical roles in defining safety standards.
But under the federal ban on marijuana, none of these agencies has engaged
with the pot industry in a meaningful way or conducted the usual studies.
Because there are no pesticides currently approved for marijuana, many pot
growers have been using whatever chemical they like. Whitney Cranshaw, a
professor of entomology at Colorado State University and one of the states
leading experts on pesticide application, told me that some of the chemicals
being sprayed on pot plants these days are so noxious they will make your
skin crawl.
The Feds have completely abrogated their responsibility and let the
situation devolve into chaos, Cranshaw said. Avid is being used; the other
big one is Floramite; and the one I really dont get is imidacloprid, which
I cant even understand why you would use on this crop it actually makes
the mites worse. But the growers dont know what theyre doing. Early this
year, officials in Colorado discovered that 60,000 legal marijuana plants at
a growing operation in Denver had been sprayed with another pesticide,
myclobutanil. Officials placed the plants into quarantine, but when testing
showed that the concentration had diminished, they released the crop for
distribution. Since then, officials in Colorado have issued a list of
pesticides that growers are permitted to use, but Cranshaw told me the list
is based more on guesswork than on testing. Theres almost zero data on
inhalation exposure to pesticide at high temperature, he said. Those
studies have to be done.
Without the federal government bringing its regulatory and scientific
expertise to the emerging pot market, some advocates have begun to wonder if
local officials can ever rise to the task. The mechanisms of state
regulatory offices, they say, are not designed to replace a massive
institution like the U.S. Department of Agriculture or Health and Human
Services. Theres only so much that we can do, Holcomb said. Well never
be able to require everyone to comply with all the requirements that we
would like to see. Instead, she had begun to hope for a kind of deus ex
machina to appear some benevolent corporate counterweight to traditional
corporate interests. We have to find people who have large amounts of
capital and are willing to engage in socially responsible business
practices, she said, who will give the consumer a choice to say, Yeah, I
want to buy from the company that actually cares.
The first thing you notice when you smoke weed with Willie Nelson is how
much weed Willie Nelson smokes. Lots of stoners get high all day, but
Nelsons intake is stratospheric. At any given moment, he will have multiple
joints burning, along with an assortment of vapes and pipes, all of which he
seems to puff simultaneously like one of those multiarmed Hindu gods,
whiffing and wheezing through the fog as if trying to minimize his exposure
to fresh air.
This begins to add up when you do the math. Nelson has spent the past 60
years touring the American landscape; the current version of the Honeysuckle
Rose is the fifth tour bus to bear its name; each of the buses has crossed
the country dozens, if not hundreds, of times; and even now, in his ninth
decade, Nelson spends about 150 nights each year on the road. Just about
everywhere he stops for the night, he is greeted by a welcoming party of
local growers, many of whom have been visiting him on the Rose for years and
are eager one might say determined to give him a taste of their best
grow. Nelson has developed, then, what may be the most expansive network of
marijuana suppliers in the country, and as a daily pot smoker leading the
unfettered life of a meandering troubadour whose habits are a secret to no
one, it is distinctly possible that he has smoked more high-grade weed over
the past six decades than anyone else alive.
A consequence of all this highness is that Nelsons tolerance is
supernatural. He can easily smoke 30 or 40 hits in a session and then play a
flawless two-hour show. He does not always deploy this talent toward noble
ends. He is famous for smoking new friends to oblivion and then challenging
them to a few hands of high-stakes poker. Willies game is cash-only, and
all debts must be settled at the table. This has led to stories among his
intimates of the time he refused to let Woody Harrelson leave the room until
he could deliver $40,000 in cash. It has also led to more than one folk song
about the perils of smoking with Nelson, including a Toby Keith ballad with
the refrain Ill never smoke weed with Willie again and a new jingle
introduced by Jack Johnson at Farm Aid this year whose chorus revolves
around the line Willie got me stoned and took all my money.
I first met Nelson this summer behind a casino in Atlantic City. He was
passing through town to play an outdoor concert, and I joined him on the
Honeysuckle Rose to discuss his plans to open a marijuana company and to
sample a few of his favorite strains. He had announced the new company in
March, but other than the name Willies Reserve, nobody seemed to know much
about it. There was still a lot of confusion, for example, about whether
Willies Reserve referred to a new strain of weed that Nelsons friends
had developed, or if it was a complete line of cannabis products, or maybe
he was opening a collection of retail stores where you could buy and smoke
and chill.
I confess to having approached that first meeting with some measure of
trepidation. I have spent plenty of time around weed and, like many people,
have enjoyed my share. But I am not a frequent smoker and rarely take more
than a hit or two. The prospect of crawling into Nelsons lair to consume
the strongest marijuana known to civilization, then trying to conduct a
coherent interview, did not sound especially mellow.
I spent a few weeks before the meeting in a training regimen. This began
with a nightly puff of smoke, then two per night, and then three, until
eventually I could burn a couple of joints without coming entirely apart.
Not that it really helped. On the day of our meeting, I climbed aboard the
Rose and settled into a chair opposite Nelson at the small table that I
would come to regard as his natural habitat. I guess about three minutes had
passed in small talk before he hoisted himself up, rummaged through the
overhead cabinets, and plopped back down with a pair of cardboard boxes
filled with pre-rolled joints. From the labels, I could see that one of the
packages held a strain called Sour Diesel, originally developed in Colorado,
and the other was a California varietal known as Blue Dream. Nelson handed
me one joint of each, pointing at the Sour Diesel first. Thats good
stuff, he said with a grin. Fire it up!
The taste of the weed was huge and oily, another dimension from what I was
smoking at home, and, against my better judgment, I took a long haul before
passing it back to him. Nelson pulled what seemed like the entire joint into
his lungs with a single drag, finally prying it away and croaking on the
exhale, Now lets take a couple hits off that other one and see if we can
tell the difference!
We spent the next hour burning down joints and a collection of vaporizer
cartridges filled with marijuana concentrate, but the more we smoked and
talked about smoking, the more I began to realize that Nelson knew almost
nothing about the plant. He really wasnt sure what kind of weed we were
smoking or how the various strains might differ from one another. He had
never put a cannabis seed in the ground and didnt intend to. Why should I
grow if this guy over here, or that guy, already has it? he asked. He also
didnt have much interest in the profusion of pot cookies, candies, and soft
drinks that have been turning up in the legal states. I dont like edibles
that much, he said with a shrug. I had a bad experience the first time I
did it. This was 50 years ago. I ate a bunch of cookies, and I lay there all
night thinking the flesh was falling off my bones. He wasnt even sure
about the difference between the two major forms of cannabis, indica and
sativa. These are commonly said to have different psychoactive effects, the
first being more like a narcotic and the second being more energetic, but
when I mentioned these things to Nelson, he just laughed. I havent become
all that expert on that, he said. The way I look at it is: Im either high
or Im not.
This discovery frankly thrilled me. Too many pot smokers these days have
gotten fussy about their weed. In the same way that modern foodies have
eroded the simplicity of homegrown food, leaving behind its rustic roots for
a universe of prickly, esoteric greens and incomprehensibly expensive
mushrooms, turning local food into a temple for snobs and picky eaters, I
have noticed a similar tendency creeping into the conversation around pot
with inflated descriptions of bud density, room-note, fruity undertones, and
heritage genetics, usually proffered in the grandiose vocabulary of the
dismal jerk who flips out over wine. Nelson was after something simpler. He
just liked getting high. He may be one of the most famous stoners on Earth,
with a tolerance to fell giants, but he is not, strictly speaking, a
marijuana connoisseur.
As we began to discuss his plans for Willies Reserve, I realized how
important this fact was. Willie being Willie, he could throw out a punch
line to explain why he wanted to open the pot business, usually delivering
some version of the line Ive smoked enough and I want to give back. But
the truth was something deeper and more important. He really hadnt started
the company for his own amusement, or to make money, of which he has plenty.
The truth was that he wanted to preserve his legendary stash to keep it
clean, keep his growers in business, and keep Big Pot off his turf. He
wanted to protect the plant he smokes every day from the corporate influence
hes been fighting all his life.
One story in particular illustrated this. Last year, when a group of
investors first approached Nelson with the idea to start a pot company, he
invited the groups leader, Andrew Davison, to a meeting at his ranch in
Texas. Davison told me that he arrived for the meeting at 11 on a Saturday
morning, and as he set up his laptop on Nelsons kitchen table, he planned
to pitch the marijuana company as a straightforward business that would tap
into Nelsons authenticity and reputation as a lifelong stoner.
I basically ran through a PowerPoint what we think the opportunity is,
how we go about it, the next steps, Davison recalled. And at the end,
Willie looked at me and said, Thats great, but I want to tell you my
values. And so he proceeded to lay them out. He talked about social
justice, and growing up on a dirt floor, and his connection to all sorts of
different disadvantaged communities, and he pointed out that there are
plenty of enterprising black entrepreneur kids who are in jail for doing
what were doing. Then he said, I really believe in the environmental
aspect of this. Its a great way to revitalize small farms, and I want to
make sure that any product we grow is as clean as we can make it and that,
wherever possible, were trying to lower the environmental impact of our
operations.
Davison laughed as he remembered the conversation, but it had forced him to
change course. He had come to the ranch with a business proposal and walked
away with a social agenda. It was evident that Willie didnt just wake up
one day and say, Hey, I could sell my likeness on a vape pen and make some
money, Davison said. Which he could have done! But this was more
important to him.
Legal marijuana is the fastest-growing industry in the United States, with
74 percent growth in 2014, according to a recent study by the ArcView Group,
a Silicon Valley investment research firm. Last year, it generated $2.7
billion in sales and delivered more than $200 million in tax revenue to the
legal states. In Colorado alone, the $88 million raised from pot was more
than double that from alcohol.
For producers of the plant, these state taxes are only a light beginning.
Federal law poses a far more onerous tax burden. Thats because marijuana
falls under an obscure section of the tax code, which makes it nearly
impossible for companies to report their earnings like a normal business.
Among other things, they may not deduct their operating expenses, such as
rental space, employee salaries, and the cost of growing equipment, without
which some producers are paying an effective federal income tax of 70
percent. Many large banks have also refused to let marijuana companies open
accounts, leading to an industry awash in cash, obscure accounting methods,
and armed guards. The legal minefield is just one of the reasons that Big
Tobacco companies like Altria and R. J. Reynolds have said they are not
planning to enter the Green Rush anytime soon. Wall Street, however, has
been far more willing to experiment with marijuana, and several investment
firms, like Viridian Capital Advisors, have sprung up to tap the burgeoning
market.
The two largest marijuana companies for now Privateer Holdings, the Bob
Marley label, and Diego Pellicer, the would-be Starbucks have both
embarked on long-term strategies to develop massive growing operations,
while also maintaining a short-term caution in light of the federal ban. At
Diego Pellicer, this has meant a plunge into, of all things, real estate. As
the companys CEO, Ron Throgmartin, explained this, Diego Pellicers core
business at the moment is to acquire retail space and then lease it to local
pot companies. We do not, and will not, profit from the sale of marijuana
until its federally legal to do so, Throgmartin said. As we wait, this
company stands on solid real-estate principles. Those real-estate
principles turn out to involve a peculiar contract with tenants: The company
leases space to those who are willing to let Diego Pellicer design their
store layout and who will allow Diego Pellicer to take over their store in
the future. They are just a subtenant, Throgmartin explained. We will
secure the real estate, we will lease the real estate, we will do the build
out, and we have a future-acquisition agreement that allows us to roll their
operation into Diego Pellicer Worldwide. When it becomes federally legal to
do so, we have the ability to acquire them overnight. For its part,
Privateer Holdings has yet to issue any Marley Natural marijuana, but the
company has invested heavily in the ancillary markets buying the prominent
website Leafly, which is a kind of Yelp for marijuana reviews, and preparing
a rollout of Marley swag, including body lotions and handmade accessories
adorned with the corporate logo. During the gold rush, there were people
who dug for gold, and people who sold picks and shovels, Throgmartin said.
Theyre selling picks and shovels. But with an eye to the long-term,
Privateer has also purchased the Canadian company Tilray, which grows
medical marijuana in a 60,000-square-foot facility in British Columbia.
Whenever the U.S. federal ban is lifted, the company will be able to source
its cannabis from a similar facility in the States.
Meanwhile, the companies that are already producing pot at the state level
can be divided roughly into two groups: Those who are trying to grow premium
marijuana for a boutique market, and those who want to emulate the mass
production and high-volume ambitions of Big Pot. Trying to divine the
difference can be confusing in any given dispensary, one is likely to
encounter dozens of labels promising clean and natural weed, but there
is no uniform definition for what these words mean. Some companies, like
Avitas Agriculture in northern Washington and Maggies Farm in Colorado,
have adopted strict internal standards, rejecting noxious chemical additives
and relying on locally sourced organic supplies, but companies willing to
subject themselves to these exacting requirements often find themselves
adrift in a market that mandates nothing comparable from their rivals.
Profiteers have come in with all different kinds of motivations in this
industry, a founder of Avitas, Adam Smith, told me. People are trying to
make a quick buck, creating dirty grows and dumping their weed on the
market.
Davison, who is now the CEO of Willies Reserve, had been wrestling with all
of these issues, and I met up with him at Farm Aid to hear what he had in
mind. He is a tall, athletic man with a ready smile and the sort of
mountain-preppy vibe that one encounters in the pages of a Patagonia
catalogue. Before starting Willies Reserve, he worked for the clothing
companies Pearl Izumi and Crocs and served on the advisory council of the
National Outdoor Leadership School. At Farm Aid, he was presiding over a far
less wholesome enterprise, if no less fun: A few slots away from Willies
bus, he had parked a tasting room for Willies Reserve.
That bus turned out to be a prior version of the Honeysuckle Rose, but in at
least one respect, the old bus had a leg up on the new one. Nelsons had a
lot of weed; Davisons had little else. There was a riot of the stuff:
stacks of perfectly rolled joints with cardboard filters and twisty tips,
Mason jars crammed with cannabis of all shades and scents and varietals, and
an assortment of tin cans brimming with monstrous buds the size of a babys
arm. There were convoluted water pipes of blown glass, a stack of cocktail
napkins printed with the words PUFF. PUFF. GIVE, and, propped against the
wall, a sign that said WILLIES RESERVE IS FOR SHARING above the hashtag
#sharethestash as if rolling around the country with mountains of
marijuana was nothing to keep discreet.
I took a seat on the bus as Davison packed a bowl with a particularly
lime-hued varietal, then we retired to a sofa to chat about his plans for
the new company. He acknowledged at the outset that building a national
company in accord with Nelsons standards has been vexing. In addition to
all the peculiar problems that face a small pot grower, a litany of other
obstacles confront a national brand. Foremost among these is the problem of
interstate transport. The Obama administration has been clear that it will
not allow producers to distribute pot across state lines, which makes it
virtually impossible for Willies Reserve to market a consistent product
nationwide. A grower in Colorado might develop a mesmerizing new strain of
weed, but there is no legal way to reproduce it anywhere else: No plant,
seed, clone, or cutting can leave the state.
It means you have to look for alternative ways to set up the company
structure, Davison said. The business model he was developing, he
explained, is a hub and ever-growing wheel. By this he meant that the
brand will consist of a national holding company and will form partnerships
with smaller companies to manage the individual states. Unlike the model at
Diego Pellicer, Davison has no interest in acquiring those local companies
and prefers for them to be small owners operating privately. To maintain
consistency, he will establish standards for potency, environmental impact,
and organic growing methods, and in exchange for adherence to these
guidelines, Willies Reserve will provide the growers with access to a
network of internal support systems, including advice on how to organize and
operate a small business.
We define the processes in detail, Davison said. Whether its grow
processes, genetic processes, production processes all of that is going to
be defined by us. He imagines the company, ultimately, as a network of
mutually supportive growers, bound together like a cooperative and committed
to a shared standard. Using the word standards is kind of generic and
mundane, he said. But in that word are a lot of proprietary approaches
that are designed to enable the growers to avoid a lot of the business
hassles that are intrinsically difficult in this industry.
This was essentially the business that Holcomb, the author of Washingtons
legalization bill, had been hoping someone would create what she described
to me as the empowerment of local, small businesses and giving them the
opportunity to participate in the marketplace. Whether such a business
could survive was another question, but Davison told me that market research
suggested they were tapping a deep vein. When we did our quantitative
research, one of the things that glaringly jumped out is that consumers want
this, he said. They want to know where the product comes from, they want
to know its clean and cared for, they want to know it was local grown and
that it has a connection to their community. It just so happens that it fits
perfectly with the regulatory requirement, and, more importantly, it fits
with Willie.
Its also something that investors have bought into. As we sat together at
Farm Aid, Davison had just closed the companys first major deal: After ten
months of negotiation, he had secured several million dollars in financial
support from a cannabis investment firm, Tuatara Capital, whose chairman,
Mark Zittman, and chief investment officer, Al Foreman, told me they were
entirely onboard with Davisons do-gooder approach. At some point, we
believe there will be an agency tasked with regulating safety standards,
Zittman said. And when those standards are put in place, our goal is for
Willies Reserve to be well inside standards. Other companies, Foreman
added, wont be ready when the federal government steps in. As standards
come into play, and more rules and regulations become common, there are a
number of operators in the industry who will have to change their basic
blueprint, he said.
All of the principals expected Willies Reserve to be in stores by the first
of January. Weve got everything in place, Davison said. Now we get to
turn on the machine.
Back on the Honeysuckle Rose, I ask Nelson what he hopes the new company can
accomplish. He starts to say something, then Annie chips in. If you believe
in the free market, then a decentralized market is free, she says. And
with a free market, people have a choice to buy clean herb. Theres some
over here, and some over there, and the market can demand what people want.
I mention that this sounds a lot like the goal of Farm Aid: to buttress
small farmers and sustainable agriculture so that customers have a healthy
option. Willie nods. Weve had to be very careful because of the tax status
with Farm Aid, he says, referring to the fact that Farm Aid is a nonprofit
organization and could risk its standing by breaking the law. We dont want
to do anything thats going to piss anybody off or give the federal guys any
reason to come in and take Farm Aid money. Itll all come together
eventually, but it has to happen legally.
He takes a long drag off his vaporizer and stares out the window again.
These problems could have been fixed on the first day, he says finally,
but you have a lot of bureaucracy and bullshit, a lot of big corporations.
So thats what were up against. Theyre trying to monopolize it all. Thats
horseshit. That aint right, and well do everything we can to keep that
from happening.
Its getting late, and Nelson has to prepare for the final set of the night,
an assortment of old-time gospel and country featuring all of the Farm Aid
musicians at once. As I turn to leave, he stands up with a grin and offers
me a massive joint. Here, he says, slipping it into my shirt pocket. Have
a little Reserve for the road.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
