Billionaire Charles Koch On Why Cannabis Should Be Legal
". . .The only time the 85-year-old CEO of Koch Industries has consumed marijuana, he says, was by accident in the 1980s. He was helicopter skiing in British Columbia, and après-ski, he and his friends enjoyed a few gin and tonics at dinner. For dessert, the chef brought out a plate of brownies. Koch ate one and after a while felt a little “loopy.” He doesn’t know who infused the sweets with pot, but he says he has known many successful friends—doctors, lawyers and other professionals—who have used cannabis.
Although Koch isn’t big on consuming it himself, he’s going public now with a long-held belief: Cannabis should be legal nationwide. So he’s putting his name, and nearly $25 million of his $45 billion fortune, to influence criminal-justice reform and legalization by the end of 2021. Brian Hooks, Koch’s right-hand man, says that a good barometer to gauge what Koch and his network are eventually willing to spend is what they’ve already put toward these issues—some $70 million in total over the last two years.
“It should be the individual’s choice,” says Koch from his office in Koch Industries’ sprawling granite compound in Wichita, Kansas. “[Prohibition] is counterproductive. It ruins people’s lives, creates conflict in society and is anti-progress. The whole thing never made sense to me.”
progress. The whole thing never made sense to me.”
The devout libertarian known for spending a fortune on political causes is now actively funding efforts to end federal marijuana prohibition. Here’s why pro-pot advocates in both parties are high on his support.
In April, Koch’s political advocacy group, Americans For Prosperity, joined other organizations to form the Cannabis Freedom Alliance, whose members have already started lobbying Congress to help lift America’s federal marijuana ban. Sitting at his desk in front of an oil painting of his late father, Fred, who founded Koch Industries as an oil-and-refinery company in 1940, Koch is finally ready to talk about why he’s pushing for legalization.
As a staunch libertarian, he sees cannabis prohibition as a basic infringement on personal freedom, as well as a destructive public policy that adds to America’s mass-incarceration problem. The U.S. should have learned from the “nightmare” of alcohol prohibition a century ago, he says.
Koch is not alone in his view. Nearly 70% of Americans now believe cannabis should be federally legal. Currently, 18 states allow for adult use and 37 have legalized medical marijuana, creating an industry that generated more than $17.5 billion in legal sales last year—a figure expected to balloon to $100 billion by 2030.
Knowing that Koch is involved brings people “a lot of comfort,” Randal Meyer, a lobbyist and member of the Cannabis Freedom Alliance said.
HIGH FINANCE
These eight billionaires have been on the front lines of the cannabis revolution, whether by starting their own weed companies, agitating for legalization or lighting up on a livestream.
Brian Hooks of Stand Together explains that their strategy depends on support inside and outside the halls of politics. It includes a heavy emphasis on grassroots activism, lobbying, the creation of broad-based coalitions, as well as media and advertising.
In June, Amazon announced that it will lobby in support of cannabis legalization, and as other companies including Altria, Brink’s and Molson Coors launched a think tank to propose federal policy, suddenly, it seems, marijuana legalization is no longer a neo-hippie cause carried on by the likes of NORML (the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws).
“For too long, drug policy has been mischaracterized as something that’s come from the fringes,” Hooks says. “When in fact the majority of Americans, for a long time, have recognized that the system is wrong.”
Valerie Jarrett, who was a senior advisor to President Obama, worked with Holden on legislation to reduce mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenders. The legislation garnered support of 80 senators, but Mitch McConnell, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time, blocked it from reaching the floor in 2016. Two years later, under President Trump, the First Step Act passed.
Jarrett says that the criminal justice reform would not have passed without Koch’s support. “That’s how you get things done in Washington—it might mean you have strange bedfellows,” she says.
More than anything, Koch sees marijuana legalization as the beginning of the end of the federal war on drugs. Here, the modern philosopher king looks to a 19th-century French economist for wisdom. “For a law to be respected,” Koch says, paraphrasing Frédéric Bastiat, “it must be respectable.”
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