Yasmin Hurd raises rats on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that will blow your mind. Though they look normal, their lives are anything but, and not just because of the pricey real estate they call home on the 10th floor of a research building near Mount Sinai Hospital. For skeptics of the movement to legalize marijuana, the rodents are canaries in the drug-policy coal mine. For defenders of legalization, they are curiosities. But no one doubts that something is happening in the creatures' trippy little brains. [continues 3003 words]
Dear Alaska and Oregon, I hear you've both got marijuana legalization initiatives on your November ballots. You're thinking about taking the plunge. For those of you still undecided, let me offer some neighborly advice. Two years ago I was in your shoes. I lived in Washington state. I had two teenage kids. I hadn't smoked a joint since college. I was leaning toward a no vote on Initiative 502, our marijuana proposition. Pot? Meh. I didn't like it, didn't use it, didn't want my kids to have easier access to it. [continues 645 words]
Brendan Kennedy and Michael Blue, private-equity financiers, settled into a downtown Seattle conference room in March to meet with a start-up. Both wore charcoal blazers and polished loafers. Kennedy, 41, is the former chief operating officer of SVB Analytics, an offshoot of Silicon Valley Bank. Blue, 35, learned his trade at the investment-banking firm de Visscher & Co. in Greenwich, Conn. Two years ago they quit comfortable posts to form Privateer Holdings, a firm that operates on the Kohlberg Kravis Roberts model: they buy companies using other people's money and try to increase their value. What sets them apart is the industry in which they invest. Privateer Holdings is the first private-equity firm to openly risk capital in the world of weed. Or as the Privateer partners prefer to call it, "the cannabis space." [continues 2798 words]
