Dear President-Elect Trump,

Congratulations on your spectacular election win last November.

You met my father, Mark J. Meagher, Chairman of Financial World Partners (FW) and a lifelong Republican, back in the early 90s at one of FW’s annual holiday parties at the world-renowned Plaza Hotel in New York. I had the chance to shake hands with you as well.

A couple of years ago, as the Cannabis Industry was gaining steam, I put my 30 years of publishing experience to work and saw an opportunity to launch a business to business website and digital newsletters to cover the emerging industry. I launched CBE Press LLC, the publisher of cbetotal.wpengine.com and four newsletters—CBE Week, CBE Policy & Legal, CBE Human Capital Management, and CBE Science and Technology to do just that. Our mission is to share best practices and benchmark the activities of the licensees, ancillary businesses and the regulatory community. I have financed the whole start-up with my capital, most of which has come from retirement savings, so I am truly a “boot-strapping” entrepreneur attempting to build a successful revenue producing business that supports me, staff and 1099 contributors.

Many of the stakeholders in the growing Cannabis Industry believe that the industry won’t reach its full potential unless cannabis is tightly regulated on the state-level, de-scheduled federally, and the grey market is shut down. These stakeholders have reacted with fear and trepidation regarding your recent election win and the selection of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General.

However, as the Founder and President of CBE Press LLC and as a small business owner, I look forward to your presidency and administration because of the pragmatic approach you have demonstrated throughout your successful career to get things done and the mutual opportunity the industry and your campaign agenda share to:

• Build world leading and competitive US industries, and keep jobs here in the states.
• Allow states to exercise their rights to follow the overwhelming support of their voters to run a tightly regulated industry that makes medicine available to those in need, and regulates cannabis like alcohol—which many would argue is much more dangerous and clearly addictive.
• Right the wrongs of the failed War on Drugs that has ravaged the possibility of equal opportunity in minority communities for the past 40 years and fix the criminal justice system that has disproportionately ruined the lives of millions of decent people.
• Stop the illegal grey market business that is standing in the way of a state and federally regulated industry.

We need your help in leveling the playing field so that revenue producing, job creating, and tax paying state licensed producers, processors and retailers have the same opportunity that any other industry has, by removing the major impediments restricting industry development.

An excellent start would be allowing licensees access to the US banking system to create a safer industry, instead of the largely cash business that exists today, and IRS reform that eliminates the unfair 280E tax restrictions that don’t allow licensees to deduct the expenses like any other company in the US. Most importantly, removing cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act Schedule I list indicating that the plant has no medicinal value will accelerate research and development to fully test the efficacy of many medicines derived from the plant, under the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration.

For the past 40 years, the bureaucracy and dishonesty of the folks in the Federal Government have stood in the way of every effort to shed light on the medicinal properties of the plant and the solutions it supplies for conditions such as pain management, appetite stimulation, and seizures. Many other ailments are at least anecdotally supported, and in some cases, just plain obvious.

Even though it only has a small percentage of THC (around 3% of the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis), Hemp also falls under the Control Substances Act of Schedule I drugs. US farmers and several industries like pulp and paper, fabric, rope, car parts, wallboard, and so on—which were once dominated by the US before moving overseas and to other countries—would be able to compete for its fair share of the international pie.

President-elect Trump, as pragmatists, let’s stop allowing special interest groups like Big Pharma and the fear mongering and dishonest practices of the DEA, the private sector prison system, and other Federal Government regulatory bodies that hide behind arbitrarily set rules and regulations established during and since the failed War on Drugs, from continuing to impede the next great American industries and the jobs, taxes and contributions to the US gross national product (GNP).

We are available to work with you to make sure that a tightly regulated and well run Cannabis (and Hemp) Industry can survive and thrive while supporting the needs of its consumers at home and in foreign markets as well.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Rob Meagher
President & Editor
CBE Press LLC
2750 Gallows Road Suite 344
Vienna, VA 22180
703.992.6779 (o)
571.212.4564 ©
[email protected]
www.cannabisbusinessexecutive.com