If you think two or three powerful companies owning and controlling the sales of all regulated marijuana sounds like a good thing, you can click away from this article and go on with your day in peace.
Rockefeller rocked a top hat as opposed to Jeff Bezos wearing a space helmet on his rocket joy rides—our government was pressured to address rising inequality by creating laws to prevent monopolies.
As the power grab for control of the multibillion-dollar industry heats up, consumers and patients need antitrust protection.
Big tobacco and alcohol companies are making significant investments into cannabis and creating their own front groups, and even larger conglomerates are openly expressing their interest in getting into the industry once the product is federally legal.
To the frustration of all of us rooting for federal marijuana law reform, no piece of legislation has even made it to a vote in both chambers of Congress.
Instead of further entrenching oligopoly-like markets, where consumers complain of high prices, we can put consumers, patients, workers and small businesses first.
When regulators have actively enforced these laws—as in the case of oil and railroad monopolies—they’ve been able to rein in corporate excesses and encourage a more diverse marketplace.
Prohibiting vertical integration is a historically tested method of avoiding anti-competitive market dominance, for example.
To promote broader market access, many states—including Washington, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Michigan—have sensibly set some type of limitation on the number and type of marijuana business licenses that one entity may hold.
Congress must also authorize states to continue their existing policies that offer state-level advantages to local and social equity businesses, which are becoming increasingly robust and starting to show results.
By authorizing states to ban or delay interstate commerce, Congress can allow the states with expertise to continue their social justice efforts, instead of voiding their policies overnight, and use the data and information gathered from those states to better regulate the industry.
One might reasonably wonder if this is all necessary.
The legal cannabis market is neither open nor free, and federal legalization does not automatically solve that.
Lawmakers must consider that without intentional protections, federal legalization could reverse the progress many states have made when it comes to public health and racial and economic justice.
The playing field will be dramatically changed for all cannabis businesses when they are competing with companies that can, for example, ship in their own supply from another state with their own existing infrastructure.
We don’t have to stay on our current path and assume that every cannabis company will get gobbled up by bigger ones until we all work for the same employer producing the same three overpriced, low-quality strains.