Written Comments from Jeremy Cady No On Amendment 3 Summit

Oct 27, 2022 by AFP

Americans for Prosperity is a grassroots organization dedicated to outreach, education, and advocacy on long-term solutions to the country’s biggest problems that prevent people from realizing their full potential. Today, both an individual having a harmful relationship with controlled substances and our society’s response to substance use are barriers that stand in many people’s way.

Americans for Prosperity approaches these issues from an anti-prohibition perspective and does not advocate for the use of cannabis. Unlike some other advocates you may hear from in these conversations, we have no financial interest in the future market and are not funded by those with a financial interest.

Our main goal is to end our country’s failed and destructive approach to cannabis. We are working across the country to ensure that states which choose to adopt either a medical or adult-use cannabis market do so in a manner that most effectively allows legal businesses to compete with the black market and ensures small businesses can thrive.

We are opposed to Amendment 3 because it does not achieve those goals. It establishes a two-tiered licensing and regulatory structure that benefits existing medical cannabis companies over other potential entrepreneurs. Amendment 3 gives existing medical cannabis companies guaranteed access to a license and early entry into the new market while providing any new companies with only a potential opportunity to operate a so-called “microbusiness.” These businesses will be extremely limited in scope and scale so they cannot effectively compete with existing large companies.

We urge voters to reject this ballot initiative that will merely enable oligopolistic control of the market and ask the Missouri legislature to pass new laws next session that will establish a competitive and safe cannabis market in the Show Me State.