Leaked document shows how legal weed could go horribly wrong

But though analysts project legal weed sales to balloon from $17.5 billion last year to $70 billion by 2028—exponential growth fueled by the beginning of adult-use sales in East Coast states like New York and the potential of a legal national market, as the U.S. Senate for the first time seriously debates federal legalization—cannabis businesses in legacy West Coast states like California and Oregon are struggling. Among other problems, they’re being squeezed by high taxes, low margins, and oversupply as companies large and small rush to enter the fray.

To avoid this uncertainty and to guarantee high profits, the country’s biggest cannabis companies—some of them publicly traded with valuations in the billions of dollars—are angling for regulations that would see government hand them what critics say is a near-oligopoly, according to source who leaked an internal document to The Daily Beast.

“They don’t want to compete,” claimed an industry insider who provided the “privileged and confidential” document—a presentation dated June 17 titled “Intentional Federal Regulation,” given to the policy committee of the United States Cannabis Council, a Washington lobbying group representing some of the country’s biggest cannabis companies—to The Daily Beast.

The source spoke under the condition of anonymity, for fear of being removed from the organization and suffering other professional repercussions.

Leadership from the USCC—a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying organization that’s spent $337,500 so far this year lobbying the Senate, according to recent filings, and whose members include major cannabis companies such as Curaleaf, PharmaCann, and Cresco Labs—rejected the characterization of its policies as false.