Thread: Pot startup donates $2 million in bid to legalize marijuana in CA.

Pot startup donates $2 million in bid to legalize marijuana in CA

By Joe Garofoli
Updated 7:10 pm, Friday, April 17, 2015



Photo: Weedmaps.com


One of California’s largest marijuana-related apps is donating $2 million toward the drive to legalize weed in the state — a move that not only would vastly expand its customer base but also foreshadows an expected increase in political activity from the cannabis industry.

Orange County dispensary-locating startup WeedMaps.com contributed $1 million Friday to a campaign committee called Californians for Sensible Reform, which will back what it feels will be the strongest marijuana legalization measure on the 2016 ballot. The company will also put another $1 million in a political action committee called Californians for Sensible Reform PAC that supports weed-friendly candidates.
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“We’re doing it because legal adult use of marijuana is inevitable. California has always an innovator and we’re falling behind other states,” WeedMaps founder Justin Hartfield told

The Chronicle Friday. “We wanted to do it to make a statement that we’re serious about this.”

Friday’s donation was a sign that unlike 2010’s failed statewide legalization campaign, cannabis industry businesses are going to be major players.

“It would be by far the largest investment by a single business that I know of,” Troy Dayton, CEO of the ArcView Group, a San Francisco firm that manages high net worth investors in the cannabis industry.

Dayton said a dozen or so businesses in the cannabis industry each spread between $100,000 and $200,000 to a variety of political interests, but the WeedMaps gift was unusual. “It is a yet another sign that the industry is maturing.”

California voters will likely have the chance to legalize recreational cannabis for adults on the 2016 ballot. A survey last month by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 53 percent of the residents surveyed think that the recreational use of cannabis should be legal.

Several pro-legalization groups are preparing ballot initiatives.

But it has been a challenge for ballot authors to unite longtime activists with deep-pocketed donors, labor, and various community organizations that want to legalize pot for recreational use. The WeedMaps-funded campaign committee will support the ballot measure that has the best chance of winning.

Hartfield boasted last year to The Chronicle about not accepting “one dime” of Silicon Valley money for any of his pot-related enterprises while his business made “north of $25 million a year.”

Putting that money towards a legalization campaign that could reshape the industry landscap “is huge,” said Alex Rogers executive producer of the International Cannabis Business Conference and a pot activist for more than two decades.

Rogers predicted other marijuana related businesses and investors will likely step up soon to put money into political campaigns that could secure their place in what analysts are forecasting could be a mammoth market.

“We tell our businesses that if you’re politically active, if you spent the time, money and resources to get involved, it will only help your business,” Rogers said.

The marijuana market has boomed 74 percent over the past year to $2.7 billion, with California — where only medicinal pot is legal — accounting for nearly half that, according to a report this weby ArcView. If pot were legalized in California next year, ArcView projects that “the entire industry could rapidly double in size.”

In January, the Founders Fund, an investment firm started by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, joined a $75 million round of funding in Privateer Holdings, which has several marijuana company investments.

Other deep-pocketed supporters have worked behind the scenes. In November, billionaire tech venture capitalist Sean Parker told The Chronicle that while he supported the successful campaign to legalize marijuana in Oregon last year he quietly discouraged what he calls several “half-baked” efforts from starting in California.

Parker is expected to be a major backer of a 2016 legalization campaign in California — if the ballot measure is written well.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/artic...ze-6207749.php

http://www.alipac.us/f19/ballot-meas...ijuana-318935/