Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to keep the “big boys” out of the marijuana industry in favor of creating opportunities for smaller operators when cannabis is federally legalized, and he says that his upcoming bill would accomplish that.In a conversation between Schumer and New York’s top state cannabis regulator that was hosted on Black Enterprise’s marijuana vertical, the majority leader talked about modeling federal reform legislation after the state’s recently enacted marijuana law, with a particular focus on social equity. “We’re taking a page from New York’s book and trying to do basically what you did nationally,” he told former Democratic Assemblywoman Tremaine Wright, who now chairs the state’s Cannabis Control Board. “What it will do is ensure that Americans in all communities won’t be arrested or barred from receiving services for using cannabis where it’s legal because the state’s making it legal,” Schumer emphasized in the Green Entrepreneur interview that the bill he’s working on alongside Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is being designed with small businesses in mind. “We don’t want the big boys to come in,” he said. “After all the pain that’s been occurring in communities like the one you represent in Brooklyn, where I’m from—to have the big boys come in and make all the money makes no sense.” He’s made similar remarks in the past, stressing that his reform bill will take specific steps to restrict the ability of large alcohol and tobacco companies to overtake the industry.
Kyle Jaeger, Marijuana Moment, 11/18/2021 11:27:00