By Chuck Smith

We are a passionate crowd, the men and women of the cannabis industry. How else would you describe our willingness to risk our personal freedom while fighting the constant legal battles generally reserved for drug cartels? Or gambling our financial security against the well-funded, well-entrenched prohibitionists and industry opponents? It certainly isn’t for a quick and easy return on investment.

But even with all that passion, it is hard for us as an industry to be heard. Like so much screaming at a rock concert, everyone knows what they are yelling about but nobody can really hear the words. Uncoordinated sounds with lack of clarity just becomes emotional noise, especially to those who may not be actively trying to hear us. Can we really be blamed though? After all, this is still a fragmented, nascent industry focused on state by state initiatives. Most companies are trying to figure out how to get started, or if they are already established, how to survive the constant challenges of ever-changing regulations. If that isn’t enough the omnipresent doom of the IRS, lack of banking or the specter of future FDA oversight, will take up most remaining resources and sleepless hours.

With all of this, who has the time to focus on messaging and soundbites? Unfortunately, the answer is–our industry’s opponents. A good example of this is the recently proposed Initiative 139 in Colorado, a constitutional amendment that would have limited potency across all products (not just plants), but was deceptively couched in language advocating the need for child resistant packaging and responsible labeling. These sound like common sense goals to most folks, not knowing that the industry and state regulators have already solved these issues at the highest level. Additionally, the average voter doesn’t understand the intricacies of potency regulation and why it would be doomed to fail, risking public safety in the process. If this type of Amendment were to pass, it would decimate the industry in Colorado and potentially create a ripple effect across the country.

So, how do we head this off at the pass so that we aren’t constantly on the defensive, spending money, time and resources defending ourselves rather than developing a better, safer industry? A collective education and focused messaging effort now, rather than while we are on the defensive, is the key. Creating a platform of pro-active communication, with consistent and coordinated information, will take back the narrative we have ceded, up to this point, to our opponents and serve as a basis upon which to continue to build our industry. Ensuring that communication is specific to fact and targeted to the right audience is critical as well. Our conservative friends will generally not react positively to the notion that “the plant should be free” or that “it’s everyone’s God given right to smoke cannabis.” They normally don’t respond well to moral activism. They do, however, appreciate jobs and taxes and votes in their district.

Ironically, as the end of the initial Initiative 139 campaign came to a close last week, our opposition has begun calling us “Big Marijuana” and “Marijuana Moguls.” Even though most of us, after checking our personal bank accounts, would dispute these monikers, it’s easy to see a “new narrative” being created. And, for the un-informed public, it is likely a name that could stick.

The fact is, we are “big business.” If we want to continue to participate and build this exciting industry we need to act like it. Far too often we are on the receiving end of the criticism, defending ourselves in some public forum or hearing from a barrage of innuendo and uncorroborated statistics. Generally we are there just trying to “get along” and pass some piece of legislation or regulation that enables us to continue to operate.

If we want to get off this hamster wheel, we must develop a national education and communication platform with continuous, fact-based, messaging. We must raise the money necessary to fund our national and local industry groups to deliver these messages. And we must do so in a coordinated and responsible way so that our messages are heard by everyone, not just those that already like us, or those looking only to challenge us.

It’s time to turn our passion into action and take back the narrative!