“Maybe someday a future U.S. president will owe his or her
backing to the marijuana industry,” writes Thomas Maier, author of
When
Lions Roar: The Churchills and the Kennedys, in a
recent Newsday op-ed.
Maier offers the teetotaling patriarch of the Kennedy dynasty as
the model for today’s would-be billionaire pot
investors. Kennedy laid the foundation for his
family’s fortune with a combination of investing in British liquor
imports and securing the exclusive rights to sell said products in
New England. Kennedy owed much of his success in securing these
deals to his close relationship with President Franklin D.
Roosevelt (for whom he would later serve as Ambassador to England)
and other Democratic Party bigwigs.
Though Maier stretches the point a bit by comparing Kennedy’s
spot in the inner circle of a presidency to “today’s pot
entrepreneurs, who often hire expensive lobbyists and
publicity experts, or contribute to pro-marijuana candidates,” he
draws a number of parallels between the repeal of
alcohol prohibition in 1933 and the slow and steady legalization of
marijuana in the United States today:
Kennedy began by offering alcohol for medical reasons, just like
today’s pot entrepreneurs in states such as Colorado where medical
marijuana was first sold before it was approved for recreational
use. Though he didn’t drink, Kennedy made sure in 1929 to get a
“Prohibition Service” permit to transport liquor legally for
personal use — roughly four cases (12 gallons) of sherry — and
became part of a widening circle of distributors who provided
alcohol to customers for solely “medicinal purposes.”
With legalization comes competition, and Maier also notes that
it was vital to Kennedy’s economic success to not only be among the
first to legally sell booze post-Prohibition, but that his company
import only the high-end hooch, separating their product from their
competitors in the marketplace:
Like today’s marijuana entrepreneurs looking for farms and
warehouses to grow their carefully cultivated weed, Kennedy sought
a guaranteed supply of top-grade alcohol. Because many U.S.
distilleries had closed because of Prohibition, he orchestrated a
deal to import British whiskey, gin and other liquor to
America.
It may be a while before a presidential election, or even a
congressional election, is tipped by the financial influence of the
marijuana industry, but there can be no doubt that
legal marijuana is big business and growing
exponentially.
Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Joe’s grandson and a noted
drug addict, has
crusaded against pot legalization on the grounds that the
“mainstreaming” of the drug would harm the mental health of the
nation’s youth and lead to the creation of “Big Marijuana.” What
must he think about the prospect of a political dynasty founded on
pot profits?
For more on the creation of Joesph P. Kennedy’s post-Prohibition
fortune, watch this Reason TV interview with biographer David
Nasaw:
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