Bob Marley’s Name Hoped to Launch Global Marijuana Brand

Legal marijuana is an estimated
$2 billion a year industry in the United States. Alaska, Oregon,
and Washington, D.C. will be joining Colorado and Washington State
in legalizing marijuana within their jurisdictions. Local
municipalities around the country are experimenting with
decriminalization as well, while other countries are taking a
serious look at legalization as well. Uruguay legalized marijuana
in a contorted government controlling fashion earlier this year and
the country’s legalization project
could well fail but that failure’s not stopping countries like

Guatemala from considering their own legalization plans. Ten
years ago, the UN
estimated the value of the global marijuana market at $141.8
billion, setting a benchmark the legal industry could end up
overtaking.

And while names like Kush, Purple Haze, or even Green Crack
might be recognizable across a wide range of users—geographically
and socio-economically—there’s not any single recognizable brand
name for the growing legal marijuana industry. Privateer Holdings,
a legal marijuana-oriented private equity firm, is hoping to change
that, by licensing the name of perhaps the world’s most well known
marijuana user, Bob Marley. NBC News
reports:

Marley Natural will look like a modern consumer product, cleanly
packaged and marketed with the help of the same agency that branded
New Balance and Starbucks Coffee. The cannabis itself will be sold
as “loose packed” buds, oils or concentrate, executives said.
Sorry, folks, no pre-rolled joints.

“This is what the end of prohibition looks like,” said Brendan
Kennedy, the CEO of Privateer Holdings, which owns Marley Natural
and plans to run it out of a loft space on Manhattan’s Lower East
Side. “Bob Marley started to push for legalization more than 50
years ago. We’re going to help him finish it.”

According to Forbes, Marley is the fifth highest
earning dead celebrity, ranked between Marilyn Monroe and
Elizabeth Taylor.