This is because socially responsible (SRI) or ESG investing is a distinct and proven sector in the investing world that attracts individual and institutional investors worldwide who want their investment to generate positive social change. In return, ESG corporations that meet strict financial criteria and have a demonstrated commitment to the community make a more substantial case about how their economic performance and business models create a benefit for the greater community.

To gain the attention of major investors, ESG companies must have written guidelines and comply with various environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requirements. They also need evidence that they have achieved these social goals. When this is demonstrated, SRI corporations have a better story to tell investors than companies presenting financial data.

ESG investing today is a $21 trillion sector of the global investment world. This is a 61% increase from 2012, when SRI invested $21 trillion. This impressive growth rate has grown 30% faster than professionally managed, non-SRI assets, according to a very inclusive and detailed white paper produced by the Global Sustainable Investment Review.

In the U.S., mutual fund companies, such as Calvert, Domini, Walden Equity, Parnassus, and Appleseed, have dedicated their businesses to investing in companies that combine exceptional financial performance with producing social goods, and they use this later activity when making their decisions to include companies in their socially responsible portfolios.

SRI or ESG companies are also included in SRI Exchange Traded Funds.

While SRI used to exist in the shadows of companies that were concerned about the environment, social justice, labor conditions, and racism as economic externalities, recent studies have shown that SRI companies outperform the market while also making good on delivering social change. A study by Allianz, a German insurance company, found that between 2006 and 2010, investors could have added 1.6% a year to their investment returns by allocating to portfolios that invest in companies with above-average ESG ratings.

The Basics of ESG Investing

SRI is the investment process in which “investors weigh the social and financial returns they expect from an investment in different ways. They will often accept lower financial returns to generate greater social impact.”

Another more upbeat definition is: “SRI is an alternative investment philosophy and strategy that seeks to encourage responsible behaviors, including those supporting positive environmental practices, human rights, religious views or what is perceived to be moral activities (or to avoid what is perceived to be amoral by the SRI society, such as alcohol, tobacco, gambling, firearms, military relations, or pornography).”

The first fund to adopt a socially responsible investment policy was the Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago in the early 1980s. This alternative investment philosophy gained traction during the anti-apartheid movement in the late 1970s. At about that time, Leon created a set of guidelines in 1977.

Sullivan, a Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and board member of General Motors, became a leading proponent against the apartheid policies in PW Botha’s South Africa. Sullivan reasoned that GM’s pension money, then ranked as one of the nation’s most significant pension funds in the U.S., would have political and economic clout if it took a social stand on racial policies, attracting worldwide attention.

In 1999, his Sullivan Principles were formalized to include racial non-segregation on the factory floor and in company eating and washing facilities; fair employment practices; equal pay for equal work; training for blacks and other nonwhites so they could advance to better jobs; promotion of more blacks and other nonwhites to supervisory positions, and improved housing, schooling, recreation, and health facilities for workers, according to the New York Times.

To Sullivan’s credit, his timing was excellent. He capitalized on the combination of assigning a new form of public political activism with investing, which became an explosive combination. This set the stage for a much broader social investing movement that, over the past approximately 33 years, has embraced such social issues as equal wages for women, environmentalism, anti-slave working environments, workplace safety, anti-child labor policies, anti-smoking, anti-defense weapons, and the humane treatment of animals.

Take the Cannabis Sector Seriously

The number of companies in the cannabis industry is small, but to its credit, it already has established a price-weighted index, the MJX Marijuana Index, comprised of about 44 companies, most of them very small. Realistically, these companies cannot be included in any institutional portfolio until they have about five years of financials.

However, it is not too early to start positioning some of these firms as companies that can be included in an SRI portfolio due to their beneficial impact on society. It would be up to each firm to position itself as a transformational force.

Reasons Why the Cannabis Industry Should Adopt ESG

So, now it is time to advance ESG investing in the cannabis industry as an ESG investing participant for a few reasons:

–It will work to reform the harsh sentencing of people who trafficked and sold   marijuana and now face exceptionally long incarcerations;

–It will focus attention on other forms of long-accepted social practices—drinking and smoking—which have apparent health-related diseases associated with their long-term use, which cost society billions in health care and could be easily eradicated by not using them in excess.

It is estimated that smoking- and drinking-related diseases cost the U.S. government $434 billion annually. By category, this breaks down as the annual smoking-attributable economic costs in the United States estimated for 2009–2012 were more than $289 billion. This included at least $133 billion for direct medical care of adults, more than $156 billion in lost productivity, and $5.6 billion (2006 data) for lost productivity due to exposure to secondhand smoke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Excessive alcohol and alcohol-related medical expenses cost states a median of $2.9 billion in 2006, ranging from $420 million in North Dakota to $32 billion in California, according to a CDC study.

Despite years of anti-smoking public education, millions of Americans remain addicted to nicotine and alcohol and cannot break the habit. Marijuana does not cause addiction, according to the most reliable and repeatable studies.

Positive Benefits of Cannabis

On the positive side, marijuana has the following benefits;

–Marijuana can be socially transformational. Without becoming exuberant, the marijuana industry is now emerging with a very new set of independent, young entrepreneurs who come from a variety of backgrounds and have been well-exposed to America’s counter-culture for years. While it may be an exaggeration, it is safe to say the marijuana industry today is not Brooks Brothers, wing-tip corporate America. While I have not seen any formal studies, I would guess it is decidedly democratic or leaning towards libertarian, multi-racial, and multi-gender.

Like the fracking industry, which took the Five Sisters oil monarchs by surprise, the cannabis industry is primarily comprised of the office equivalent of wildcatters who worked in the shadow of the big oil companies devising revolutionary oil drilling techniques, such as horizontal drilling and experimenting with compounds to break apart shale thousands of feet under the surface to extract oil and natural gas. In the process, the wild caters of the fracking industry revolutionized oil exploration and did a complete end around the major global oil companies.

Without overextending this analogy, the cannabis industry can propel pharmaceutical research, the entertainment, music, and food industries, as well as environmentalism. In the process, they will rely on grassroots social participation to reshape the nation’s antiquated anti-marijuana laws at all jurisdictional levels. This alone represents a major political coup, which has more potential impact on the country than all the smoke the Tea Party has made thus far.

–Pharmaceutical research. Cannabinoids, an active chemical compound found in marijuana, have been used in medical treatments for thousands of years. However, since federal law states that the possession of marijuana is illegal in the United States, most states have enacted laws to prevent its medical use. Taking its cue from the Justice Department and federal law, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved Cannabis as a treatment for cancer or any other medical condition.

According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), cannabinoids have beneficial properties which can aid cancer patients. Specifically, the NCI said: “The potential benefits of medicinal Cannabis for people living with cancer include antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief, and improved sleep.

Although few relevant surveys of practice patterns exist, it appears that physicians caring for cancer patients in the United States who recommend medicinal Cannabis predominantly do so for symptom management. The active ingredient for medicinal use is Cannabinoids, a group of terpene phenolic compounds found in Cannabis species (e.g., Cannabis sativa L.). Research into this new family of pharmaceuticals is happening in other parts of the world, particularly Israel. Still, research is being hampered in the US for political and legal reasons.

Get Socially Responsible Fast

So, what should a company in the cannabis industry with a demonstrated (possibly) five-year financial track record that is seeking individual or outside investments do next to attract the attention of SRI investors?

I suggest they copy the formal model developed by the Global Sustainability Review and gather all of the needed data and evidence to make a top-quality institutional presentation about how their company hits every one of these SRI goals.

This can be copied from the Review found here.

The presentation must be perfected before it is presented to any outside serious investors. Only then are you ready for prime time?

Once this is prepared, practiced, and perfected, it is time to make a concerted pitch to the nation’s socially responsible mutual funds (Domini, Calvert, Parnassus) and fund companies that have stand-alone SRI funds (Vanguard, Fidelity, Appleseed Fund, Walden Social Equity Fund, for example.)

This pitch should resonate inside this genre of investment firms. While many cannabis companies are new and have no long-term track records to be included in a portfolio, the time to prepare the socially responsible case is now so that companies can be included in research reports, performance summaries, and news updates.

Socially responsible investing took years to even appear in the investment industry. Economists used to dismiss non-financial activities as externalities or as not fundamentally crucial to the ongoing data gathering, investment research, and performance delivery process.  Today, it is a $3 trillion investment category widely popular with Millennials.

But now that shareholder activism and transparency have become accepted, after being resisted by the investment and financial services industry for decades, including the marijuana industry into the asset mix is a grand possibility and one which can be done by individual investors tomorrow if some more mature companies put together the right package of financials, industry innovation, and social transformational possibilities.

After all, what is investing all about if it cannot make people and their society more positive, conscious, upbeat, just, and profitable? And it is all organic and natural, too.

Since this website was created in 2011, Mutualfundreform.com has sought to educate investors and future retirees about securing a more financially stable retirement.  Now, something is happening that can increase your odds of having a more financially stable retirement. That is the start of a progressive political caucus that can address various issues, including greater investor protections and other policies that can contribute to a better retirement for all Americans.

This is the progressive movement. And to help push this along on the financial and investment sides of the economy, this site–www.theprogressiveinvestor.org–will continue to follow its mission since 2011 to educate individual investors, but it will also allow you to pair with investment professionals, fund companies, attorneys and money management firms that follow the fiduciary standard, offer transparency, low fees and concerns about social issues ahead of other business practices that victimize customers or border on legal violations.

Building on Our Past

This site was one of the first to alarm Americans about retirement crises. Most average Americans do not have enough to retire, and most don’t know about the everyday financial practices that will decrease their retirement accounts. This site was one of the first to note the detrimental impact of 30 years of stagnant wage growth on retirement funding, why housing wealth is critical to building a financially secure retirement, and how fees are often hidden in 401(k)s and all individual investments erode that erode an investor’s net return.

This site was one of the first to advocate openly for the Department of Labor’s fiduciary standard. We explained why the investment industry has spent millions of dollars lobbying to kill it and how it would mean open season on individual investors.

This site noted the inherent conflicts of interest between brokers selling investment products and why unsophisticated investors were their best customers.

We showed that neoliberal economic policies, including privatization, hide material facts from investors and that hidden fees in 401(k) plans mean employers are working against the interests of their employees.

We showed the links between harmful regulations, bad politics, and lobbying, their devastating impact on average Americans, and how they hurt the American Dream for millions.

These links between the financial industry’s “profits at any costs” policies and the harm caused to unsophisticated investors have been a significant theme in Mutualfundreform.com.

We are taking it further to expand on these themes working against individual investors today. We are doing this by rebranding Mutualfundreform.com into Theprogressiveinvestor.org and Theprogressiveinvestor.net.

Advocating for Progressive Financial Professionals and Investors

The new site, Theprogressiveinvestor.org, will continue to advocate for fair disclosure and will work to connect pro-client financial investment professionals with individual investors who believe in politically progressive values and want to be treated according to the fiduciary standard.

The site will accept paid ads from financial and investment professionals, including Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), investment companies, mutual funds, pro-investor attorneys, and companies searching for progressive investors in new sectors, such as the cannabis industry, as well as socially responsible mutual funds and ETFs. The tabs on the main home page provide more information about listings, including prices.

In short, Theprogressiveinvestor.org will connect smart, politically educated, astute investors with competent, fair-minded investment professionals.

This is more important than ever since entitlement programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and 401(k)s, are under continued attack from politicians and sloppy plan sponsors who are not advocating for reducing fees and expanding offerings in their retirement programs.

Visit Theprogressiveinvestor.org for more information about having your firm listed on the site. We also welcome your story suggestions.

If you are an RIA or financial services firm looking to find like-minded clients, consider advertising on this site. The ads can list your pro-investor business case. The listing information is available on the front page of this site. You can access it by clicking on the Business Listings and Submit Listing tabs.

History has numerous examples of scientists who have twisted, concealed or fabricated scientific studies to promote an industry or political point of view.

This has occurred in the oil, tobacco, insecticide, pollution industries when scientists, universities and industry-sponsored research labs produced politically-tainted studies termed as “scientific.”

Now, it is being used by senior officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to discredit and marginalize scientifically valid experiments about the positive benefits of cannabis to treat a variety of serious conditions, such as muscle spasms in multiple sclerosis, Tourette syndrome, chronic pain, nausea and vomiting in HIV/AIDS and cancer chemotherapy, loss of appetite from cancer, hyperactivity of the bladder in patients with multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, and dyskinesia caused by levodopa in Parkinson’s disease epilepsy, cancer, and PTSD.

So despite these positive indications, why would a federal agency intentionally seek to disregard and discredit volumes of medical and scientific research?

The answer has to do with more with bureaucratic self-preservation and power-grabbing than with serving its mandate, “… the long-term immobilization of major drug trafficking organizations through the removal of their leaders, termination of their trafficking networks and seizure of their assets.”

While the DEA does make major arrests and confiscates tons of hard drugs, like other bureaucracies, it also has a self-serving agenda to perpetuate elements of the drug trade and create false issues that boost its importance and operational budget.

Born Under a Bad Sign

Founded in 1973, the DEA was created by President Richard Nixon to harass blacks and hippies as part of his 1971 categorization of marijuana as a Schedule 1 narcotic.  In a surprising interview with John Ehrlichman in Harpers (April 2016 issue) with author Dan Baum, the former counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs in the Nixon White House admitted that the real cause for the war on drugs had a much more sinister intent: to crush political dissent.

“You want to know what this was really all about?” he asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The war on drugs escalated under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush who militarized drug enforcement. Under Bush, a former head of the CIA (1976-1977),

“nearly 40,000 paramilitary-style SWAT raids were being conducted each year on Americans. Many of those were for nonviolent, misdemeanor drug offenses,” according to the Drug Policy Alliance.”

As the nation’s drug enforcement agency, the DEA has a clear financial interest in getting funding by investigating and prosecuting cannabis crimes.  The science is irrelevant to them,” according to Michael Minardi, an attorney in Jupiter, Florida, who is a lifetime member to the NORML Legal Committee. “They ignored the science even after Francis Young, their own DEA Administrative Law Judge, ruled in 1988 that cannabis should be rescheduled. In her comments, Young said “marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”

While federal research into cannabis has been intentionally made very difficult to do for decades, the DEA did allow one study, by the National Institute of Drug Administration, that only researched the detrimental effects of cannabis.

Take the case of the DEA’s foray into stopping narco-terrorism.  In a detailed article, “Trafficking in Terror,” by Ginger Thompson in the New Yorker (Dec. 14, 2015), Thompson writes that the DEA paid informants hundreds of thousands of dollars worldwide to lure them into smuggling drugs to buttress the DEA’s case that narco-terrorism even existed on a large scale.

Operating under the provision of the Patriot Act passed in 2006, the D.E.A. has pursued dozens of cases that fit the broad description of crimes under the statute, which targets violent criminals with one hand in terrorism and the other in the drug trade.  But as Thompson writes, “The agency has claimed victories against Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and established the figure of the narco-terrorist as a preëminent threat to the United States.”

But she noted that in recent years, the D.E.A. has substantially increased its funding for international operations even though the narco-terrorists whom the D.E.A. pursued found that many cases they brought to court, relied heavily on sting operations set up by D.E.A. informants, who were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to lure the suspects into participating in illegal activity.

“The D.E.A. strongly defends the effectiveness of such sting operations, claiming that they are a useful way to identify criminals who pose a threat to the United States before they act,” Thompson wrote.

But security experts do not agree whether the criminal connections that the D.E.A. says are a threat are real. For instance, Thompson said ISIS is funded by oil revenues, taxes, and extortion, but not by drug trafficking. According to the New Yorker magazine, Russell Hanks, a former senior American diplomat, who got a firsthand look at some of the D.E.A.’s narco-terrorism targets while serving in West Africa, told Thompson, “The D.E.A. provided everything these men needed to commit a crime, then said, ‘Wow, look what they did.’ ”

He continues, “This wasn’t terrorism—this was the manipulation of weak-minded people, in weak countries, in order to pad arrest records.” Thompson takes an in-depth look at the case against three Malian smugglers, who were arrested after a sting operation and accused of aiding Al Qaeda. The U.S. government eventually dropped the narco- terrorism charge, and the judge in the case stated that she didn’t believe the men were involved with Al Qaeda.

In another instance, I interviewed a former DEA agent who was stationed in Thailand, a major source of heroin importation.  As part of his DEA responsibilities, he also had access to a CIA office located in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok where mail being sent to certain U.S. officials in was routinely opened and read.

In one instance, he said the CIA officer showed him a letter that was received from the leader of one of the major Chinese gangs in Thailand who processed heroin for export to the U.S.  In the letter, the Chinese gang leader asked for U.S. funding to turn his opium-heroin operation into a farming operation.  In short, he wanted to get out of the drug business. The CIA officer showed the letter to the DEA agent and threw it into the trash. When asked why he did not pursue the request, the CIA officer said “it would be bad for business.”

Bad Science Used for Political Gain

Since the pursuit of narco-terrorism yielded few hard results, the DEA has pushed ahead on using bad science to discredit the valid medical research in support of cannabis.  The DEA adopted this tactic since it has been used successfully before by powerful corporate and government interests to derail and delay other public health-related issues from closer scrutiny.

One example is the recent discovery of research papers from 1946 that discussed the dangers of air pollution.  According to Common Dreams, “Industry executives met in Los Angeles in 1946 to discuss growing public concern about air pollution. That meeting led to the formation of a panel—suitably named the Smoke and Fumes Committee—to conduct research into air pollution issues.

But the research was not meant to be a public service; rather, it was used by the committee to “promote public skepticism of environmental science and environmental regulations the industry considered hasty, costly, and potentially unnecessary,” according to the Center for International Environmental Law.

Common Dreams also found that “documents also show how Humble Oil (now ExxonMobil) scientists actively engaged on climate science in the company’s name beginning in the 1950s, even as they actively funded and published research into alternate theories of global warming.”

Due to its global nature, environmental science has become so highly partisianed that the Executive Secretary of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change said “the science has driven the politics…if the science is to continue to guiding the politics, it is essential to keep the politics out of the science.” (Cited from “Critical Political Ecology” The Politics of Environmental Science,” Tim Forsyth, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2003). That may sound ideal since scientific explanations and solutions have increasingly become more enmeshed in everyday social and political actions.

Similar studies used to distort hard science were also conducted by the lead and tobacco industry as early as the 1970s and 1953, respectively.  The tobacco industry cover-up has been called the “crime of the century” because of its global scope and the number of people affected. In a federal case, United States of America vs. Philip Morris, Inc., et al.,  filed in the US District Court for the District of Columbia, of tobacco industry defendants were charged with “engaging in a criminal conspiracy that sought to cover up the dangers of smoking; mislead the public on the dangers of secondhand smoke; cover up the addictiveness of nicotine; deceptively market ‘light’ cigarettes as less harmful than regular cigarettes; deliberately target young people to recruit new smokers; and deliberately refrain from producing safer, less addictive cigarettes.”

The reason for the conspiracy? Money. “The companies allegedly conspired “to preserve and expand the market for cigarettes and to maximize the cigarette companies’ profits.”

The tobacco conspiracy was traced to a December 1953 meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York, where the executives planned a coordinated industry response to recent studies documenting the health hazards of smoking, including lung cancer. In January 1954, the companies issued a joint statement, published in newspapers across the country that sought “to discredit scientific studies that connected smoking to various health risks.” The government said the tobacco industry “continued to pursue a policy of deliberate deception for decades, despite mounting evidence of the dangers of smoking.”  If that sounds familiar, it is because the deceptions and delays worked.

As a result, the tobacco companies got away with murder for 41 years. Finally, in a famous series of 1994 hearing, led by Congressman Harry Waxman (D-Cal.), the CEOs of the four major tobacco companies were subpoenaed to testify about the cover-up and lies of the tobacco industry. The top CEOs from RJ Reynolds, Phillip Morris, Brown & Williamson and Lollilard all adamantly refused to vary from their prepared stories that they knew cigarettes were addictive and were killing people. “They all four claimed they did not believe this.”

A related, but more insidious example of perverted science emanates from eugenics, “a notorious branch of pseudo-science,” that led to forces cases of sterilization by state officials, restrictions on immigration, and marriage laws. Eugenics was taught in schools and churches and became popular in American culture in the 1920s and 1930s. The problem was that it was based on illogical research citing the coat color of guinea pigs, trying to link mental and behavioral traits that were not scientifically defined or simplifying complex human traits, such as intelligence, as emanating from a single source.

Eugenics attracted a following among Americans seeking a way to bar immigrants. It was later adopted in Europe as a justification for ideologies, including by the Nazis, as related to a “science” that could determine “racial purity.”

Neocon’s at the DEA and the CIA

The DEA’s self-serving use of bad science and self-serving agendas, such as “narco-terrorism” were preceded by similar bureaucratic-perpetuating strategies at the CIA. Writing in “How The American Neoconservatives Destroyed Mankind’s Hopes For Peace,” Paul Craig Roberts, Reagan appointee, said “The military/security complex, the CIA, and the neocons were very much against ending the Cold War as their budgets, power, and ideology were threatened by the prospect of peace between the two nuclear superpowers.

According to Roberts, “the secret committee was authorized by President Reagan to evaluate the CIA’s claim that the Soviets would prevail in an arms race. The secret committee concluded that this was the CIA’s way of perpetuating the Cold War and the CIA’s importance.” (Cited from Thom Hartmann blog.)

Decades later, we can substitute the DEA’s self-serving strategy for what the CIA threatened under Reagan. But since the DEA’s threat of narco-terrorism failed to materialize, it devised and perpetuated another myth: cannabis has no medical value.

The DEA’s Bad Science  

Like the tobacco, oil, and chemical industries that have misused science to promote their own agendas, the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration has chosen to ignore and distort a large body of international scientific evidence, including at least 100 academic and scientific reports and studies, that support the beneficial medical effects of cannabanoids, an essential molecule found in cannabis.

This includes studies that clearly state cannabis does not belong as a schedule 1 substance, including the 1999 Institute of Medicine Report that said “except for the harm associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range tolerated for other medications. Thus, the safety issues associated with marijuana do not preclude some medical uses.”

However, this statement (“within the range tolerated for other medications”) has an important difference from actual experience. “The problem is that almost all F.D.A.-approved drugs have been the primary cause of non-naturally caused deaths in the U.S., plus the report failed to address the fact that tobacco kills over 400,000 people per year,” according to attorney Michael Minardi.

In November 2015, the DEA’s acting chief Chuck Rosenberg, stated that

there is no credible scientific evidence that shows that cannabis has any positive medical benefits despite the fact that “several studies have found smoked marijuana has medical benefits and mostly mild side effects,” according to FactCheck.org.  The same site also quoted from an article by JAMA  (the Journal of the American Medical Association) that “at least some such evidence does exist that there was moderate-quality evidence to suggest that cannabinoids may be beneficial for the treatment of chronic neuropathic or cancer pain (smoked THC and nabiximols).” Nabiximols is a cannabis extract delivered as a mouth spray.”

According to Time, DEA chief Chuck Rosenberg said the idea that marijuana can be used as medicine is a “joke.”

“What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal — because it’s not,” Rosenberg said. “We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don’t call it medicine —that is a joke.”

Rosenberg’s comments immediately drew criticism from some Democrats who asked for his resignation. The Obama Administration remained silent on this matter, but it has loosened restrictions on cannabis research, even if it is long overdue.

In the interim, the medical evidence from global research has continued to mount that cannabanoids can reduce the negative impacts of asthma, nausea associated with cancer, HIV-associated sensory neuropathy, PTSD symptoms, epilepsy and eating and sleeping disorders.

The DEA’s Real Motive

“How then is it really about our safety versus their lust for money when cannabis has not been the primary cause of death in one person in over 5000 thousand years of use.  I also ask this question, if Cannabis was so harmful to someone’s health, why would the pharmaceutical companies spend so much money lobbying against legalization, and why would they be developing cannabis based drugs, Sativex which is available in 39 countries but not the U.S.A., and Epidiolex.

When wide-ranging social changes face a society, it has a few choices: accept them or resist them. But if we accept that in modern society, as the sociologist J. Rundell writes, “modernity [has] became identified with the development of objective knowledge, that is, with the development of modern rationalist, scientific thinking,” than the results of the scientific process should be debated and not dismissed outright.

However, the sociologist Emile Durkheim found that organizations can transform their organizational cultures into organizational ideologies, where ideology is defined as “crafting of ideas and values for the purpose of advancing a specific agenda. “As long as such ideas and values are clearly identified with a ‘special cadre within a society, they will resist being absorbed into common sense,’ i.e., transformed into culture,” James R. Lincoln writes in the paper, Durkheim and Organizational Culture.

So maybe it is the DEA’s culture that refuses to be changed by valid scientific research. This means that the cannabis-DEA debate is an extension of the generations-long culture wars that still rage between traditionalist, conservative, progressive and liberal values.

Chuck Epstein is a freelance journalist who has written for over 50 publications. He has won national awards from the Mutual Fund Education Alliance (MFEA) and his web site, www.mutualfundreform.com, was named best small blog in 2009 by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW).  He lives in Palm Beach, Florida.

The reasons: Cannabis is a perishable, crop-by-crop product, and producing the exact clone of a strain in successive generations is difficult.  The exception may be in edibles, but even here, there has to be enough supply to build a national brand, which is the most common way people think of a brand’s accessibility.

The second reason is that world-recognized brands today are held by publicly-traded companies. From the corporate treasurer’s perspective, a corporation’s intangibles, including its brand, are derived from the difference between a corporation’s book value and its stock market valuation.  When there was a wide price gap between the price companies were bought and sold for in the later-1980s, that price difference was often attributable to the corporation’s “intangibles,” which was often its brand value.  (For the more financially-oriented, a brand’s value is derived by taking the net present value of future expected earnings and then discounting them to net present value through a discount model, which assesses the risk of those earnings being achieved.)

Of course, non-profits, such as charities and foundations, also have brand value that makes it easier for them to raise funds, educate the public about their cause and conduct their business.  But the brand for charitable organizations is closely tied to their earned reputations and the good works they accomplish.

Third, the product is illegal in most states. This makes the effort to build a national brand problematic if the product is not accessible nationwide. It is also not inconceivable that reactionary state legislatures can limit or ban marijuana, even in states where it is illegal.

Is Branding Necessary?

While building a brand takes decades and hundreds of millions of dollars, the good news is that the cannabis industry may not need to be brand conscious in the first place.  Yes, local branding efforts will prove valuable at the urban and community levels, but depending on where a business is in the cannabis production chain, branding may not be that helpful.

At the grower’s level, a business’s reputation (which is only one element of a brand) will depend on delivering quality, pure, tested products.  At the dispensary level, the basics of good service, reliability and fair prices are the expected behaviors that can be buttressed by community involvement, good labor practices and adopting a co-op corporate structure. Suppliers will build their reputations based on positive bread-and-butter business practices, enhanced by clever forms of differentiation (coupons, partnering with complementary businesses, new products, etc.)  But for all these segments, branding will prove to be expensive and frustrating.

Marketing in the Social Media Age

Modern corporations, most of which are at least a generation old, that have become household names, built their brands in a different era.  Only over a decade ago, media was limited to print, TV, and radio, was more channeled. Traditional advertising (almost always through an agency) was the accepted path to reach customers and was determined by the client’s ad budget. Building brands in a pre-internet world was always an expensive challenge, but it was easier since there were fewer media variables to consider and consumers were more readily identifiable.  They also had more disposable income.

It’s certainly understandable why new business owners today focus on building brands. Brands, as a form of intangible were called “goodwill” on corporate balance sheets until ad agencies began to isolate and quantify the name values of Coca-Cola, Ferrari, Chanel, IBM, and Polo. Academics and financiers have found this fertile ground for study.

For instance, one study of companies in the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) Index found that 70% of the market capitalization of its top 100 companies was intangible, while 20 years ago that same value was 20%.  Today, brands are considered a global company’s most important single company asset, as exemplified by the combined values of Microsoft ($69 billion), Apple ($145 billion) and Coca-Cola ($56 billion), which in 2015 were valued at a combined $270 billion, according to Forbes.)

But all this does not translate into the inherently, non-traditional, mostly privately-held cannabis industry. People identify quality services and products brands both intentionally and sub-consciously. The subconscious makes lightning-fast links between positive and negative emotions and outside events that are both current and past. This occurs in every human interaction regardless of whether a business in intently focused on building a brand or just serving a random customer. 

Too many entrepreneurs misunderstand and misuse the idea of branding.  I’ve heard many people say they have a web site, so now they can build a brand.  Even worse, many people assume that because they have a web site, they also have a brand.  That’s not true. It can even be a delusional waste of limited resources for serious entrepreneurs.

Instead, the emerging cannabis industry can take the best elements of branding and adopt them for free in their local applications.  At their best, brands create the following:

• They make loyal customers that can maintain a company’s profitability and a stable work force.
• They help create new products.
• They protect customers by providing consistent quality.
• They help promote corporate participation in socially responsible programs.

Which Industry Segment Has the Best Branding Prospects?

Yet with all of these obstacles, there are some good opportunities for branding in the cannabis industry, specifically for growers and dispensaries.

Growers have a solid opportunity if they follow the existing model used in building brands in the wine industry.  Growers can model their efforts on wineries that also have a perishable commodity, subject to natural variations and exceptional years.  Growers will face these same issues even under greenhouse conditions.  The key is to build the grower’s brand by touting top strains, product cleanliness, horticultural expertise and adherence to strict, transparent test results by independent laboratories. Growers also have the best opportunities to build national (or as close to national) brands as the regulatory environment permits.  The caveat is that the branded vineyards have built their reputations over decades. Can the cannabis industry be that patient?

The second good branding opportunity exists with dispensaries; however these brands will be localized, sometimes at the city or neighborhood levels. Brand-building for dispensaries will be based on being a solid, community-oriented local business.

So can cannabis be the first billion dollar industry in modern corporate history to succeed without having a handful of “leading” national brands?

My bet is yes, if they follow the best outcomes that brands can create. Then, the individual companies that comprise the industry can reap the rewards brands offer without intentionally going through the huge expense and time that brand-building requires.

Yet despite all of the supposed sophistication among a population inundated with all forms of information and constant media access, modern propaganda is alive and well, and  thriving in the 21^st Century.

While most people think propaganda was the practice of fascist dictatorships that rose in the 1930 and 1940s, propaganda also exists in modern democracies in a variety of forms, including some of which are good and serve a valid social purpose. Think of the campaigns to use seatbelts when they were mandated during the 1960s, get a polio vaccine or the nutritional benefits of breast feeding infants, especially in the under-developed world.

Yet, propaganda, (defined by Merriam Webster as “ideas or statements that are often false or exaggerated and that are spread in order to help a cause, a political leader, a government, etc.,”) is also used for disinformation or to disparage and discredit advocates who are on the opposite side of a policy debate and to advance specific policies sponsored by corporations, special interest groups and governments.

Citizens today have been victimized by three major propaganda campaigns over the past 100 or so years designed to protect corporate profits, maintain the political and competitive status quo and derail citizen initiatives to achieve a specific goal.

The best examples that have current relevance to millions of Americans are the propaganda wars against cannabis, global warming and discrediting evidence about the addictive and toxic effects of cigarette smoking.

The Propaganda War Against Climate Change

Here are some specifics:

As reported in the New Yorker (Sept. 18, 2015), the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site, InsideClimate News reported that executives at Exxon (now known as ExxonMobil) knew as early as 1977 that oil was heating the planet based on reports from its own internal scientists. InsideClimate News published the first installment of a multi-part exposé that will be appearing over the next month. The documents and other materials obtained from retired Exxon employees and officials show that corporate management knew about the problem, yet ignored it and went on the propaganda offensive for decades “to organize the campaigns of disinformation and denial that have slowed—perhaps fatally—the planet’s response to global warming,” according to Bill McKibben of the New Yorker.

More specifically, McKibben writes that the InsideClimate News research found the smoking gun in ExxonMobil’s reactionary corporate response:

“But it turns out Exxon didn’t just “know” about climate change: it conducted some of the original research. In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the company employed top scientists who worked side by side with university researchers and the Department of Energy, even outfitting one of the company’s tankers with special sensors and sending it on a cruise to gather CO₂ readings over the ocean.

“By 1977, an Exxon senior scientist named James Black was, according to his own notes, able to tell the company’s management committee that there was “general scientific agreement” that what was then called the greenhouse effect was most likely caused by man-made CO₂; a year later, speaking to an even wider audience inside the company, he said that research indicated that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere, we would increase temperatures two to three degrees Celsius.

“That’s just about where the scientific consensus lies to this day. “Present thinking,” Black wrote in summary, “holds that man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”

ExxonMobil gave us oil spills and now it seems they have destroyed the truth about their own discovery. Worse, this propaganda war persists today. One report shows that while climate change is happening, “a shocking number of congressional Republicans — over 56 percent — deny or question the science,” according to Bill Moyers.

Another source, Politifact, found only eight Republicans out of 278 who believed climate change was real science. This denial is important since the Republicans are pushing for the passage of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport dirty oil sludge across the US, as well as cutting the EPA and eliminating pollution standards. In 2014, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted against an amendment that would have stated conclusively that climate change is occurring. All 24 Republicans on the committee voted against the bill. A study found that the Republicans who voted to deny climate change had accepted about $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries, according to analysis by the CAP Action War Room.

The lesson here is that propaganda campaigns cost corporations billions and are waged over decades, but they pay off financially and politically for their beneficiaries. The public, however, always remain victims.

The Propaganda Campaign Against Marijuana

While the 1937 film, Reefer Madness, may be the most popular example of the propaganda war against marijuana, this campaign began as early as the 1920s and was then formalized when marijuana was classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic, in the same class as heroin, under the 1970 Controlled Substances Act. This misclassification, according DrugPolicy.org, put marijuana in the most restrictive class, Schedule I, reserved for drugs with a “high potential for abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” and a “lack of accepted safety.”

While this classification may have its origins in racial discrimination, for industrial purposes (to keep hemp off the market as a rival to synthetic fibers manufactured by Du Pont, or to eliminate competition from the liquor industry), or its perceived ability to deteriorate social relationships, the propaganda war continues today as evidenced in the 2016 Republican debates.

In an incisive summary of how the topic of marijuana was treated in the most recent Republican presidential debate prepared by John Hudak of the Brookings Institute, the misinformation directed against the recreational and medicinal uses of marijuana was flowing freely in the debates. Four candidates expressed their opinions; one was in favor of its use (Rand Paul), while Jeb Bush, Chris Christy and Carly Fionina were largely against. Of the four, Christy was the most strongly opposed to its use and made the long discredited “gateway” drug argument against pot. He also said he would enforce federal law to supersede state laws and thus eliminate recreation use in any state which allows it today. Christy takes this position even though nearly 60% of New Jersey residents support legalized, regulated recreational marijuana.

The Propaganda War Against the Dangers of Smoking

This may be one of the best case studies in modern propaganda and one of the deadliest ones that affected people worldwide. Like climate change, this involved the manipulation of scientific studies that were originally conducted and subsequently covered up by the same people who sponsored them in the first place. And like climate change, the conspiratorial impact of these cover-ups will impact millions of people for generations.

In a chilling report issued by Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), the group described the tobacco industry as “a predatory industry whose market dynamics demand that it recruits young people. It does this by deploying vast promotional expenditures to create, communicate and amplify a set of positive values associated with the product. Once the glamour phase subsides, nicotine addiction takes over making the customer dependent on the product and securing a profitable cash flow. Trapped by nicotine addiction, the smoker is subject to a variety of sub-lethal illnesses which culminate in a one in two probability of death through smoking-related disease. The smoker’s death means a replacement customer must be found – and the cycle begins again.”

So what was the tobacco industry trying to hide? Many things. The worst being that the annual global death toll caused by smoking is 4 million. By 2030, that figure will rise to 10 million with 70% of those deaths occurring in developing countries, according to the Action on Smoking report. (This death toll should be compared to the use of marijuana worldwide (zero deaths) as an argument for its legalization.)

Then, there are issues related to second-hand smoke, especially the impact of smoking on society. One 2004 study from MIT found that the estimated actual cost of smoking was nearly $40 per pack, if the cost included its secondary health impact on others.  This total included:

–$33/pack for the cost of early deaths, smoking related disabilities and other factors (which includes $20.28 a pack due to reduced life expectancy);

–$5.44/pack for the cost of the effect of second-hand smoke on significant others;

–$1.44/pack for the cost of the effect of second-hand smoke on the society as a whole.

With a pack of cigarettes costing approximately $40, it is estimated that a smoker would spend $171,000 over a lifetime. More recently, a pack of cigarettes can cost up to a whopping $150/pack, according to the web site, Natural Society.

While there are numerous web sites and films (The Insider, 1999; Thank You for Smoking, 2006) describing the tobacco industry’s cover-up, this timeline shows the scope and deceit of the tobacco industry’s propaganda campaign.

The Tobacco Industry Propaganda Timeline

1953–A group of tobacco companies met at the Plaza Hotel in New York City and devised a public relations plan to counter health concerns associated with smoking. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

Early-1950s–Research is published showing a statistical link between smoking and

lung cancer. At the same time the industry’s own research begins to find carcinogens in

smoke and starts to confirm the relationship between smoking and cancer. (Source: ASH)

Late-1950s–Tobacco industry scientists privately accept the association between

smoking and lung cancer, believing it to be one of cause and effect. Thirty years later, the

majority of the industry still publicly denies the causation theory – with one exception –

the US manufacturer Liggett, who broke ranks in 1997, much to the dismay of the other

major tobacco companies. (Source: ASH)

Late-1950s to mid-1960s–Tobacco industry scientists urge executives to admit to the problem and solve it, arguing that there were commercial opportunities to exploit. Research begins into the “safe cigarette,” but it soon fell under the influence of the lawyers, who successfully argued that a company could not produce a “safe” product. (Source: ASH)

1964–U.S. Surgeon General issues report linking smoking to lung cancer, tobacco. Tobacco companies seek to discredit the report.

1999–Clinton administration accused the tobacco industry of racketeering as part of a coordinated plan to deceive the public about the dangers of smoking and to cover up the knowledge they had to the contrary. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

2006 (August)–A federal judge ruled that the tobacco industry had actually engaged in racketeering practices, stating that the industry had engaged in a decades-long conspiracy to hide the dangers of smoking from their users. (Source: BeyondCommonKnowledge.com)

This is a propaganda campaign and cover-up that has lasted over 50 years and killed millions of people worldwide. It is a campaign that involved politicians, industry groups, lobbyists, scientists and doctors. It is a propaganda model that is still being used by some corporations and industries today.

Propaganda Campaigns in 2015

While many people think slavery was eliminated after the Civil War (1861-1865), there is more slavery worldwide today (an estimated 35 million) than at any other time in history.

Similarly, people should not think that propaganda is a rudiment of 1930s fascist dictatorships. It is alive and well today and it is an extremely profitable business, just ask the think tanks and some bad media outlets, which knowingly push bad information. The stakes of pushing misinformation is high because propaganda is used freely to advance specific social, religious, and political agendas, such as those opposed to the legalization of marijuana.

The counter-measure that should be used against bad, prejudicial propaganda is education. This is not high tech, but it’s most effective technique when used on a daily basis to counter distorted and prejudicial presentations that try to come off as authoritative. Simply put, truth is the best offensive weapon against lies. But the unfortunate reality is that prejudicial propaganda is a common tool in the marketplace of public opinion. It also will become worse in any election year.

The vast opportunity, the equivalent of the “Go West Young Man” slogan which opened the American West, is the current effort to legalize marijuana.  The legalization efforts would open the doors for many new entrepreneurs and greatly enhance the profitability of key sectors of the U.S. economy.

But sadly, this is not the case for one of the most obvious beneficiaries of pot legalization efforts: the food industry, including the $684 billion (in sales) restaurant industry.  Its no secret, Americans love to eat (about 35% of U.S. adults are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and in America, the average household spent $2,678 for dining out, according Plunkett Research.

Specifically, the restaurant, fast food industries and their trade associations have so far been asleep at the wheel, as the greatest boon to caloric consumption in modern times winds its way through various state legislatures.

Anyone who has ever tried marijuana knows that its greatest benefit, side effect or happy event is its ability to make anyone ravenously hungry.  From Cheech and Chong to the National Cancer Institute, smoking marijuana has already stimulated after-hours fast food drive-in window lines at the nation’s fast food outlets.  Why else would two people be driving up to the Wendy’s drive-in window at 2 am wearing sunglasses and ordering a dozen cheap hamburgers?  They certainly were not out jogging.

At the more scientific level, the  National Cancer Institute cites the results of  “trials conducted in the 1980s that involved healthy control subjects, inhaling Cannabis led to an increase in caloric intake, mainly in the form of between-meal snacks, with increased intakes of fatty and sweet foods.“

Sleeping Trade Associations

So given that smoking marijuana and increased caloric consumption is an accepted fact among experienced people, why haven’t the nation’s top food trade associations endorsed the legalization of marijuana?

Strangely, most have never even considered the idea.  So in the interests of journalistic integrity, I sent e-mails to the following food trade associations asking if they had considered endorsing the legalization of marijuana which would be in the interests of their own members. E-mails were sent to the National Restaurant Association, Snack Food Association, Beer Institute, American Institute of Bakers, National Confectioner’s association, and the Organic Trade Association.

Not one responded.

This was entirely expected.

The reason:  trade associations are among the most reactionary organizations in Washington.  Their stated purpose is to look after some of the interests of their own members.  But those interests are all carefully aligned with the most mainstream and conservative ones. They are foremost lobbying organizations and at best, rarely dabble in anything as controversial as reform, even if it is for increasing the minimum wage, which clearly benefits the entire nation.

That idea is so outside of their thinking, that they would be startled to find that Henry Ford, a Nazi sympathizer, anti-labor industrialist, advanced the $5 day for eight hours of work in January 1914 because he wanted his assembly line workers to be able to buy the cars he was making. The New York Times said this wage created “a national sensation.”

Business trade groups are not that progressive. They cater to the least common denominator.  For instance, if there are three members in Nebraska who would object to something, the trade group opts to delay and do nothing.

A major reason for this break between trade associations and their own constituencies and the general public comes from a new report, Testing Theories of American Politics:  Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, by professors Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page, of Princeton University and Northwestern University, respectively.  In their extensive study using about 1,800 variables, they asked this simple question: Which group of Americans—average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest or business-oriented interest groups─have the most influence in shaping public policy?

Their sad conclusion is this: “Not only do ordinary citizens not have uniquely substantial power over policy decisions; they have little or no independent influence on policy at all.”

So where does the power to influence U.S. policies reside?  Again, the report found that it is concentrated among the few.  “The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence.”

Among those business-centric economic groups would be trade associations, and their extensive lobbying machines.  The study found a “surprising result (that) could reflect the self-interests of businesses which lobby for more government spending in areas which benefits their members,” such as trade associations.  But even these trade associations do not represent the interests of the general public (i.e. average citizens), nor even all of their members.

Take the case of the National Restaurant Association (NRA), which represents 500,000 restaurant businesses.  And from their web site, here is what the NRA says it does and conversely, why it is missing its greatest marketing opportunity ever.

In their own words, the NRA says:  “In partnership with our state restaurant associations (SRA), we work every day to empower all restaurant owners and operators to achieve more than they thought possible.”

Response:  Legalizing pot would certainly allow their members to sell more food than ever before, certainly “more than they thought possible.

In their own words:  “We represent and advocate for foodservice industry interests with state, local and national policymakers—taking on financial and regulatory obstacles before they hit our members’ bottom line. We provide tools and systems that help members of all sizes get significantly better operating results.”

Response:  the legalization of marijuana would directly improve bottom line restaurant results without adding anything to overhead. All they would have to do is come up with the right munchies menus offered at normal or extended hours.  No expensive restaurant remodeling needs, just the enhanced potential to get “significantly better operating results.”

In their own words:  “We save our members time, money and headaches by helping them take on what matters most for their success and growth—whether that’s protecting their economic interests, sharing best practices, or getting them in front of emerging trends.”

Response:  If this is not a powerful emerging trend, nothing is. It is also a no-brainer to see how it would improve their “success and growth.”

In their own words:  “We strive to move our industry forward by finding answers to the tough questions, distilling complex information into practical knowledge and helping our members navigate the issues that can leave them in the weeds (sic). And that makes us the go-to resource for smart, relevant intelligence that helps our members run their businesses better.”

Response:  Aside from the NRA’s prescient reference to being “in the weeds,” the NRA should read their own corporate mission statements to see how they can help provide the “relevant intelligence that helps our members run their businesses better.”

It also helps that the NRA is in the weeds. Now, they should work on turning those (smokeable) weeds into new profits for their restaurant members.