E-commerce giant Amazon is officially lobbying on cannabis.
The company formally registered this week to support the MORE Act, a bill to end the federal criminalization of cannabis.
This is significant news as it could help make legislation happen.
“I’m quite disappointed that we’ve really seen no movement whatsoever at the federal level,” said Matthew Schweich to Politico. Schweich is the deputy director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “I think that if Amazon were able to lend its political support to federal reform and fund state level efforts, that would be a net positive for the cannabis reform movement in this country.”
“They didn’t tell me anything about wanting to get in sales or anything,” said Maritza Perez, director of the office of national affairs at Drug Policy Alliance, who met with Amazon to discuss the bill last month. “I did express the fact that they’re a big corporation, and that people may think that they’re doing this for other reasons. And they understand that that might be the perception.”
Several advocacy and industry groups, including Drug Policy Alliance, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Canopy Growth Inc., have reported meeting with Amazon officials in the past month to discuss federal marijuana policy.
Amazon said in June that its “public policy team will be actively supporting The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act,” otherwise known as the MORE Act, which would decriminalize cannabis and provide for expungement of some non-violent cannabis offenses, had been a long time coming.
Amazon being involved could mean the company wants to enter the space, which may not fare too well for small businesses.
“There have been a lot of concerns that they might try to push out the ability of small businesses to be able to succeed in this space, so that’s definitely something that we’re on the lookout for,” said Morgan Fox of the National Cannabis Industry Association.
