Marijuana Industry buys Colorado petition companies, Makes petitioners sign No Compete Clause

We're hearing news out of Colorado that marijuana proponents have bought off all of the petition companies and have made petitioners sign a no compete clause which essentially makes it impossible for Anti-legalization groups to petition for push back initiatives."They were offering $75,000 to $200,0000, depending on size of each company, to get contracts that say they will not gather signatures for this ballot measure," said attorney and former Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty. As of an hour ago proponents of the initiative have said that they are backing out of trying to gather signatures. Ali Pruitt, a supporter of the campaign called Healthy Colorado Coalition, "We simply couldn't go toe-to-toe with the marijuana moguls who committed tens of millions to defeat our common-sense controls on the sale of recreational marijuana," Ali Pruitt, a supporter of the campaign called Healthy Colorado Coalition

Proponents of Initiative 139 in Colorado have been fundraising and we're set to start gathering signatures for the initiative when they received news that the Marijuana industry has bought petition companies and made petitioners sign a no compete clause. Public opinion has shifted according to recent polling done in Colorado. If Initiative 139, which proponents believe would pass, were to get into the ballot it would

• Required child-resistant packaging, as we have for aspirin and ibuprofen.
• Put health warnings on marijuana labels.
• Restricted product THC potency to 16 percent, even though THC occurs naturally at only .2 to .5 percent in cannabis.

When asked about the issue Ben Cort said "The narrative of the marijuana industry has been 'don't meddle with our business, because the voters have spoken and the will of the voters is sacred. This is a democracy.' Then we have a genuine democratic effort to improve recreational marijuana regulation, and the industry shuts down democracy with big money and a bag of dirty tricks,". We're used to the tricks of the marijuana industry and it's supporters. Their goal is to silence the opposition at all costs. It happened in Colorado during the Amendment 64 campaign and it happened in Oregon and Washington as well.

I asked Jo McGuire, who spends her time educating employers on their rights in a legal state among other things, what she thought about the issue also "This is a stunning example of what we should all recognize as nothing less than organized crime tactics. This isn't about some weed. It's about a well-funded industry that wants to profit from addiction. This is a sad day and represents a culture shift that puts drug money over public health and safety."

In Pueblo Colorado marijuana proponents have been using these dirty tricks against a ballot initiative there to ban marijuana businesses also. During the petitioning the marijuana industry got the law changed that would require more signatures to get an initiative on the ballot and it's now up to the courts to decide whether or not that initiative will indeed be in the ballot this November. In another incident in Massachusetts proponents of the legalization initiative there  have filed a complaint in regards to Walpole Police Chief John Carmichael appearing in a press conference put on by the opposing campaign. The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol said that Chief Carmichael was in violation of his duties for appearing in a political press conference in uniform and arriving in a tax payer owned vehicle. 

I find the irony in that the industry that is claiming that prohibition violates their unreal constitutional rights to consume their drug is now trying to violate the actual rights of the people to petition their government for policy change. They keep clamoring on about "The will of the people " when it suits their agenda, but when the will of the people may be against them they want to silence the people. Hopefully "The People" realize that the marijuana industry only cares about one thing and that is their drug. They don't care about tax revenue and they surely don't care about regulation.