Pubdate: Fri, 19 Apr 2013
Source: Denver Post (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Denver Post Corp
Contact:  http://www.denverpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/122
Author: Eric Gorski
Page: 1A

NEW PLAYER IN REGULATION GAME STIRRING THE POT

The name appeared out of nowhere, unfamiliar to the players who have
worked for months to influence how recreational marijuana will be
regulated in Colorado.

On March 28, someone named Matt Taylor hired high-powered lobbying
firm Axiom Strategies to work on "marijuana issues," records show.
Taylor has since expanded his lobbying team to rival that of anyone
with a stake in adult-use marijuana legalized by Amendment 64 in November.

"No one knows who he is, and with a name like that, no one has been
able to find out much," said Joe Megyesy, who lobbies for a law firm
that specializes in marijuana and for the Marijuana Policy Project,
the main funder of the Amendment 64 campaign. "I haven't seen anything
like it-but we've never seen anything like Amendment 64."

Colorado's marijuana mystery man, it turns out, describes himself as a
formerMarine and failed race-car driver who made his wealth in home
heating oil on the East Coast and wants to get in on the ground floor
of a budding industry worth untold millions in his home state.

Big spender

The appearance of a new, big spending character comes at a key moment
as Colorado enters unchartered territory of legalized pot. Disparate
interests and unlikely alliances are trying to shape the rules that
will determine who can enter a highly lucrative business and how the
market will be structured.

Marijuana interests-led by medical marijuana business groups and
dispensaries - already have paid at least $137,475 to lobbyists in the
fiscal year that began in June, a Denver Post analysis found.

And the real battle has not begun: Bills in the General Assembly to
establish rules for recreational pot have yet to be introduced, and
fewer than three weeks remain in the session.

One issue has proven especially controversial: whether to let
recreational pot stores and commercial growers operate
independently.

Momentum has shifted to that approach, a turn away from medical
marijuana industry rules that require growers and sellers to be part
of the same company and for stores to grow most of what they sell.

On the side of at least starting with the medical model is an unlikely
alliance of medical marijuana business groups, law enforcement and a
citizens group seeking to restrict the recreational industry.

Those advocating for a more open system are strange bedfellows, too: a
labor union, activists, smaller medical marijuana business interests -
and the mysterious Mr. Taylor.

The issue first arose publicly in a working group of a task force
appointed by Gov. John Hickenlooper. The working group backed making
shared ownership of grow operations and retail stores optional.

Rep. Don Pabon, D-Denver, the panel's co-chair, said voters made clear
they wanted marijuana to be regulated like alcohol, which has a
three-tiered system of manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

"The purpose of that is to prevent monopolies and cartels and a small
amount of interests owning the industry," Pabon said. "Primarily, that
came out of Prohibition, where mobsters and the black market were
prevalent. And we didn't want to make that same mistake-to have
legitimized drug dealers and thugs running our system."

The full task force reached a different conclusion. The group
recommended the medical marijuana industry's regulatory model, noting
that industry officials, law enforcement, and state and local
regulators all advocated for it "to ease implementation and
enforcement and to demonstrate to the federal government that Colorado
is sticking with a regulatory model that has worked."

A swinging pendulum

The pendulum swung back in the other direction April
8.

A legislative committee, spurred by Pabon, voted 7-3 to endorse
allowing recreational pot stores and growers to operate independently.
Lawmakers also shrunk the window in which medical marijuana businesses
would have exclusive access to seeking recreational pot shop licenses,
from one year to three months.

Medical marijuana interests and law enforcement were suddenly on
defense.

"I don't think the general principles of supply and demand should
apply to something like this that is still against federal law," said
Greenwood Village Police Chief John Jackson, legislative chair of the
Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police."We are in the infancy of
this here, and we are deciding to turn the faucet wide open."

Christian Sederberg, an attorney who helped write Amendment 64, said
he supports requiring common ownership of grow operations and
retailers for a "minimal period of time" to give regulators time to
adapt. Other large dispensary interests stress they don't want to make
the structure permanent, either.

Meg Collins of the Cannabis Business Alliance - which includes
dispensaries, lawyers, doctors and others - argues that the approach
also will make the federal government less likely to intervene.

"I don't look at it as us trying to preserve a monopoly," she said. "I
look at it as us having been in the business trying to make sure we
remain in the business, and that the Department of Justice does not
make an example of Colorado."

Marijuana entrepreneur-in-waiting Matt Taylor hired a team of six
lobbyists - one more than the Medical Marijuana Industry Group - to
argue otherwise.

Business success

Taylor, 47, said he was born and raised in Colorado, attended public
high schools in Denver and Metropolitan State College, then joined the
Marines and was deployed to Iraq and the Pacific.

He said he worked in semiconductors and software in California, then
made an ill-fated venture into racing Corvettes and Vipers.

His business success, he said, came with a New Jersey biofuels company
called Shintan Inc. The company's CEO, Galvin Glover, said Taylor
turned the company around, made it a lot of money, divested his shares
in February 2012 and moved on.

Taylor said he does not know exactly what he wants to do in the
marijuana business but has no interest in being a retailer.

His lobbyists argue the medical marijuana structure constrains supply
and makes it tougher to track product.

"Do I want to be the next Google or Facebook of marijuana?" Taylor
said. "I want to be able to be the best legitimate business operating
in that industry that has transparency, that the public approves of
and feels is actually operating in the community as a community
partner. ... I would like to be a model for legitimacy."

Taylor said he has no partners or investors. He said he lived in
Denver while commuting to his East Coast job-important because under
the proposed rules, any marijuana business owner must be a Colorado
resident for at least two years. Records show Taylor is an active
Colorado voter registered as a Republican.

"I'm just a businessman trying to make his way into a business that
apparently the other business owners don't want anyone else in," he
said.

Michael Elliott, director of the Medical Marijuana Industry Group,
said his group is disappointed collaborative efforts to create an
effective regulatory structure "were subverted at the 13th hour by a
new, anonymous and well-financed player."

Taylor does not think he has been that influential.

"If you ask me what my lobbyists have gotten me," he said, "it's
gotten me an interview with you and a big bill."
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MAP posted-by: Matt