We’ve said it repeatedly: Not only are State marijuana retail laws ineffectual, but they’re also heavily slanted in favor of the big players and geared to leave smaller community retailers out in the dark. This situation is no more true than in the case of Missouri. As if to prove our point, the latest round of shenanigans there involved large-scale retailers playing footsie with government regulators after using unapproved pesticides and getting caught with their cameras off at crucial moments during cultivation.
Three Big Missouri Names
The three marijuana giants in question are Holistic Health Capital, FUJM, and Archimedes Medical Holdings. You’d be right if you think these names would fit the roll call for just about any mean-spirited pharma bro hedge fund with frost running through its veins. All three companies have been accused of using the same shady tactics at their medical marijuana grow sites, and they’re walking away with a slap on the wrist for their efforts. All while thousands of tiny growers around the country – but especially in Missouri – struggle to get their hands on a growing license.
No Further Proceedings
The companies must now sell their licenses to 3rd parties following state regulations. When you stop to think about this, it’s easy to see why the situation is a complete farce. The pharma concerns in question are not legally compelled to sell their licenses to anyone who needs them. In fact, they’re in the perfect position to pick and choose the next buyer of said licenses are.
In other words, we’re witnessing yet another bait and switch game where these companies can recoup their investments from the highest bidder.
Picture The Audacity
Immediately after the state of Missouri arranged for the licenses to be sold, investigations by the regulators were halted. The companies all pleaded not guilty and pharma bros went on with their lives as if nothing much had happened at all.
Talk about an easy deal. And just imagine you’d tried the same thing as an individual grower. Good luck with that, because, in the US, companies are treated as persons. The fact of the matter is that the business associates of Archimedes Medical Holdings, Holistic Health Capital, and FUJM aren’t being tarred and feathered the same way small individual growers have been around the country.
In fact, we’re likely to see the money-grubbing continue in one or two predictable directions as these pharma bro companies each get a few of their closest business associates involved in growing again; probably using the same or similar underhanded methods as before. This is how large-scale investment holdings work: One hand cleans the other.
Another fact that stands out for us is the geographical proximity of all three of these companies. Were they complicit in profiteering? It doesn’t make legal sense from our side to make any outright accusations; in fact, for the legal record at least, we’re not saying anything like that happened. “For the legal record.” Ahem.
But in real-world terms, it does seem a little strange that all three companies are located a stone’s throw away from each other in Perryville just on the Missouri-Illinois border.
Marijuana grower licenses are extremely rare commodities in Missouri, with the State legislature having set the limit at 60 cultivation licences in total. No new licenses are being issued at this point, and if that isn’t bad enough, they cost between $6,000 and $10,000 a piece on the rare occasion that do they appear.
So if the question is how small-time growers are affected, the answer is, they aren’t. Mostly because there aren’t any grass-roots cultivation facilities to be found in Missouri.
In addition to this, Missouri features some of the strictest possession laws in the country under which, even in modern times, it’s condemned tens of thousands of people to an average 7-year jail sentence. Thank goodness there are movements like Legalmo22 that intend to change that, or at least raise awareness around the issue.
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