Is the Arizona Legalization Battle a Template for Future Fights?
The deep-pocketed forces aligned against adult-use cannabis legalization in Arizona indicate some of the strategies (and types of players) one can expect in the 21 states that have not legalized cannabis.
In a deeply researched piece for Entrepreneur Magazine, author and cannabis correspondent Andre Bourque outlines the road map that cannabis' enemies took in the 2016 election to turn voters off.
Interestingly, according to Bourque, while the forces that defeated legalization in Arizona "are getting help from an influential, if informal, coalition of evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons, who are motivating their flocks to vote against", a similar effort failed in Arkansas. (Perhaps this is because the Arkansas effort was to legalize medicinal cannabis, while the Arizona effort was for adult-use which, even in California, took 20 years).
We can't do this well-written, in-depth piece justice with a quickie summary, and the research is really worth digging deeper - - check out the original piece on Entrepreneur.
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