Recent arrests in Buffalo really got me thinking.

Two postal workers were accused of taking bribes to deliver boxes filled with marijuana. Evidently these boxes were being shipped via the U.S. Postal Service from the West Coast to the addresses of unsuspecting citizens on these letter carriers’ routes in New York. The carriers would then intercept the packages and hand deliver them to their intended destination, in exchange for a $200 to $300 “delivery fee.”

What does a story like this say about the nature of our industry? Well, even if it doesn’t make it into the news, I think it’s safe to say that this type of occurrence can happen every day.

Why? Because our industry lacks full legitimacy. Rather than giving people an acceptable way to work within the law to transport cannabis from one place to another, we’re creating criminals.

Is cannabis the crime?

Cannabis is a product with a wide range of medicinal uses that can be legally purchased and used in a growing number of states. Once a cannabis product crosses state lines, though, its transit is reclassified as a federal offense.

Nothing has inherently changed about the product except its physical location. Nonetheless, transportation is still a federal offense.

In the case of this Buffalo example, if the seller could have legally transported the shipments, I’m guessing they would have. They probably would prefer to not have to bribe postal workers to get the job done, but it shouldn’t have to be this way.

If you take a step back, you can see that the core issue is the lack of legitimacy in our industry.

Whether we’re talking about postal workers in Buffalo taking bribes to deliver cannabis, or cancer patients in Texas traveling to Colorado to get the medication they need, all of this just keeps pointing to the same thing: We need an immediate call for legitimization in order to lead the way for legalization.

We can take steps to change this now

Beyond talking, debating and wringing our hands, what can we do about this? What steps can we in the Cannabis Industry take right now to help legitimize our industry? Here are a few of my ideas:

• Provide smokeless options – Smokeless options help divorce cannabis from its negative stigma. Take medical marijuana, for example. The medical Cannabis Industry has just as big a public relations problem as the recreational Cannabis Industry. Everywhere you go, you’ll find that a big part of the public thinks “medical marijuana” is just a sneaky way to legalize pot smoking. Moving beyond combustible products into capsules, edibles, patches and other smokeless options will help combat this. “Cannabis” does not have to mean a bunch of college kids sitting around in a haze of smoke. “Cannabis” can also be extremely beneficial for an elderly grandmother taking a prescribed pill to combat distressing medical symptoms.
• Mimic the pharmaceutical industry – Thinking about that elderly grandma, a big step that the medical Cannabis Industry can take is to focus on putting cannabis into a form that people associate with “medicine” — capsules. Yes, capsules have been the standard method of medicine consumption for over 60 years. Capsules enable very precise dosage control, they’re familiar and accepted, and because of their superiority, they can help bring legitimacy to our industry.
• Encourage reciprocity between states – I’m a big proponent of this. If, for example, someone wants to buy cannabis in Washington and transport it to Oregon, this should not be illegal. After all, these states border each other. We’re talking about two geographically touching legal states, both of which have legalized cannabis. They should move towards laws that allow for reciprocity.
• Recognize the validity of local laws – For example, the laws in Vancouver, British Columbia allow for dispensaries where cannabis can be purchased in person. Throughout most of the rest of the country, cannabis purchases must be delivered through the mail. In an effort to close down these dispensaries, Health Canada (the Canadian federal organization responsible for enforcing the laws involving cannabis) sent out “cease and desist” letters to each of these businesses and asked the local police to enforce these closures.The Vancouver police are choosing not to plan any raids on local dispensaries based on these warning letters. Constable Brian Montague of the Vancouver police was quoted as saying, “The police will continue to focus their limited resources on other crimes unless they hear a particular dispensary is selling to children, linked to gangs, or is posing a public safety issue.” Evidently they want to focus on bigger problems than pot shops that are operating within the confines of local laws.

WE must provide the solutions

If the dispensaries in Vancouver were dispensing acetaminophen, nobody would care. If the mail carriers were delivering boxes of Viagra, nobody would care.

But, the nature of our product invokes a stigma that needs to be reversed.

This is a problem that the Cannabis Industry is facing on many levels, in many countries and in many forms. The problem is a lack of legitimacy.

It’s up to us to provide the solutions. If we don’t do it, we can’t expect anyone else to, either.