Pubdate: Wed, 26 Mar 2014
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2014 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Evan Halper, Tribune Washington Bureau

POT INDUSTRY PUTS ON PINSTRIPES

Republican Leads Way As Lobbyists Start to Swarm Nation's Capital

WASHINGTON - Hoping to get pot legalized in Nevada, an investment 
firm specializing in the burgeoning marijuana industry invited the 
ballot initiative's backers to pitch 150 financiers at a Las Vegas symposium.

Within 10 minutes, they raised $150,000.

Political contributors are not the only ones taking notice of the new 
realities of the marijuana business, said San Francisco-based ArcView 
CEO Troy Dayton, who estimated that his group would pump about 
$500,000 into pot this year.

Officeholders and candidates now jostle for the stage at investor 
meetings as well, he said.

"A little more than a year ago, it would have been worthy of a 
headline if a sitting politician came to talk to a cannabis group," 
he said. "Now they are calling us, asking to speak at our events."

No clearer example of the change exists than the industry's newest 
full-time lobbyist, Michael Correia.

Correia, an advocate for the 300-member National Cannabis Industry 
Association, is a former Republican staff member who spent two years 
as a lobbyist for the American Legislative Exchange Council, the 
powerful conservative advocacy group that has worked with state 
lawmakers to block the Affordable Care Act, clean energy incentives 
and gun restrictions.

"People hear the word 'marijuana' and they think Woodstock, they 
think tiedye, they think dreadlocks," he said. "It is not. These are 
legitimate businesses producing revenue, creating jobs. I want to be 
the face of it. I want to be what Congress sees."

Correia doesn't like to smoke pot. It makes him sleepy, he said. And 
he isn't among those whohave been in the trenches for years fighting 
for legalization.

For him, the work is largely about the federal government 
unnecessarily stifling an industry's growth.

Any conservative, he said, should be troubled when companies can't 
claim tax deductions, keep cash in banks or provide plants for 
federal medical research.

"I have legitimacy when I walk into these offices and say, 'This is a 
cause you can get behind,' " Correia said. "I am not the 
stereotypical marijuana movement person. I grew up supporting these 
principles of limited government and federalism and fairness and 
individual liberty. This is the ultimate poster child for all of that."

As pranksters and protesters give way to lobbyists and consultants in 
pinstriped suits, longtime pot advocates welcome the reinforcements 
but sometimes bridle at the bottom-line agenda.

Officials at the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana 
Laws, or NORML, expressed annoyance when some industry players in 
Maine recently opposed a legalization bill in their state.

Full legalization threatened to break the monopoly on pot sales that 
current medical marijuana sellers enjoy.

"A lot of these companies are just in it for the money, the way any 
entrepreneur is," said Erik Altieri, a lobbyist with NORML.

Moreover, some marijuana advocates said, the all-business approach 
has taken some fun out of the job.

"I used to go to cocktail parties, tell people I was a lobbyist for 
marijuana, and their minds would be blown," said Dan Riffle, who 
advocates for the Marijuana Policy Project. "You could see their eyes 
light up. They would be like, 'Whoa, that is a real job? Tell me more.' "

Now, Riffle said, "I tell people and they are like, 'Oh. OK. I work 
for the energy sector.' "

But along with a certain staidness comes new partners.

Correia's association, for example, recently formed an alliance with 
Grover Norquist, the anti-tax activist who runs Americans for Tax Reform.

Last fall, Norquist appeared at a news conference with longtime 
nemesis Rep. Earl Blumenauer, DOre., one of the most liberal members 
of Congress, to promote a measure that would allow marijuana 
enterprises to deduct business expenses from their taxes.

"Grover's view is government should not pick winners and losers," 
Correia said. "It is a fairness issue. This resonates with him."

When dozens of cannabis business owners fanned across the Capitol 
this month for a day of lobbying, Correia advised them not to dwell 
on philosophical issues about the war on drugs, but to instead talk 
with lawmakers about how the federal government was undermining the 
growth of a legitimate industry.

"What Congress wants is more money," said Lev Mallinger, an 
accountant with the firm Bridge West, which represents hundreds of 
marijuana sellers eager to claim tax deductions.

Changing the tax law, he said, "will bring in more money. It 
encourages more dispensaries to be forthcoming with their financials 
and pay their taxes."

Now that the industry has legitimate money, politicians would like 
the favors to go both ways.

The Marijuana Policy Project used to get a request for campaign 
donations about once a week, Riffle said.

Now, "I oftentimes just don't answer the phone when I see a 202 area 
code because I know it is going to be someone calling asking for money."

Pot lobbyists acknowledged that passage of any of the half-dozen 
measures they support probably remains at least a few years away.

But the federal government, they said, can be out of sync with a 
growing number of states only for so long, and victory is inevitable 
as soon as the politics of pot catch up with the fast-changing realities.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom