Big Tobacco Is Selling A Corporate Cannabis Blueprint As A Public Mandate, Former New York Regulator Says (Op-Ed)

*“CPEAR’s poll is a thinly veiled attempt to persuade policymakers to take
a broadly popular issue in a less popular direction.”*

*By Damian Fagon, Parabola Center*

In 1994, R.J. Reynolds quietly pumped millions into a flag-waving coalition
called “Get Government Off Our Back.” The mission was simple: pose as a
grassroots movement with an anti-regulation agenda to prevent the Food and
Drug Administration from touching cigarettes. Three decades later, a
similar playbook has found its way to cannabis, and the fingerprints are
unmistakable.

Today’s vehicle is the Coalition for Cannabis Policy, Education and
Regulation (CPEAR), bankrolled in part by Altria, the Marlboro parent that
sank $1.8 billion into the cannabis firm Cronos Group. Earlier this month,
CPEAR released a poll trumpeting a popular “mandate” for the STATES 2.0
Act, a bill that would take a “states’ rights” approach to marijuana. Set
aside the patriotic headlines and the math tells another story. This poll
functions not to record public opinion, but to manufacture it.

*The Messenger Is The Message*

CPEAR is not a neutral think tank. It is a front group financed by Altria
and other tobacco and alcohol giants.

The polling firm, Forbes Tate Partners, also happens to be a public affairs
firm and a registered lobbyist for Altria. Sponsor and pollster are, quite
literally, on the same team.

Accepting the findings at face value asks us to forget that the data and
the desired outcome share the same business address.

*A Framework For Consolidation*

The cynical design of CPEAR’s favored bill, STATES 2.0, lies in what it
doesn’t do: expunge criminal records, protect cannabis workers’ rights,
prevent marijuana-related deportations or take any accountability for the
harms caused by the war on drugs. Instead, 50 states will compete for
investment on the most lenient, “business-friendly” terms they can devise.

The deepest-pocketed operators and conglomerates will flock to low-tax,
low-oversight jurisdictions, monopolize supply chains and absorb smaller
competitors. We have seen this playbook before in alcohol and tobacco, and
the economic logic with cannabis will be no different.

Every law we pass shapes the economy Americans will inherit. Adopting the
STATES 2.0 Act would codify consolidation and leave mom-and-pop operators
scrambling for scraps.

Congress can choose a better course by insisting on a legalization
framework that clears records, protects state regulation and channels
investment to the very communities that paid the highest price under
prohibition. Anything less turns legalization into prohibition by another
name.

*Persuasion By Design*

CPEAR’s poll is a thinly veiled attempt to persuade policymakers to take a
broadly popular issue in a less popular direction. It frames STATES 2.0 in
the language of states’ rights, a tested appeal to conservative voters,
while staying silent on relevant questions related to record expungement,
equity and small business access.

By excluding legislative alternatives such as the MORE Act, which pairs
legalization with the justice reforms that a majority of Americans do
support, the poll reduces a complex debate to a loaded yes-or-no test.

And by asking how a person would feel about a congressional candidate or
the Trump administration if they supported marijuana reform, the final
question seeks to make CPEAR’s chosen bill look like a winning political
decision. And yet, it isn’t.

*What The Numbers Really Say*

The poll’s own data reveal a critical weakness. Despite general support for
federal legalization standing steady at 70 percent, respondent enthusiasm
drops to the low 60s when presented within the STATES 2.0 framework.

Wouldn’t we expect a federal marijuana bill to garner at least as much
support as marijuana legalization generally? But even in a poll framed by
the bill’s own advocates, STATES 2.0 is less popular than the cause it
claims to represent.

And the news for their favored politicians is even worse—despite CPEAR’s
creative description of a “near majority” being more likely to support a
pro-cannabis candidate, the big takeaway is that the actual majority
would not be more likely to support a pro-cannabis candidate. With tobacco
and alcohol conglomerates leading the lobbying charge, can we blame them?

We don’t know what else the numbers showed.

The report relies on a low-transparency online poll of 2,051 respondents
and omits key disclosures that make it impossible to verify or replicate.
Without information on respondent demographics, such as age, gender
identity, race and income or a nuanced look at their political philosophy
instead of just party labels, one could easily “cook the books” by
oversampling favorable groups and pretending it happened organically.

By withholding these data, along with the weighting methods that the
American Association for Public Opinion Research considers basic
requirements, the pollsters tell Congress and the voting public to simply
trust them. Given their blatant conflict of interest, why should anyone?

*Damian Fagon is a former New York cannabis regulator and the executive
leadership fellow at Parabola Center for Law and Policy.*

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Mandate, Former New York Regulator Says (Op-Ed) appeared first on Marijuana
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