Governor Jay Inslee joins us and shares how impressed he is with the rapid and positive growth of the Cannabis industry: “One of the most impressive things about this is that how fast this has been seen as a mainstream industry where we now have probably three or 4,000 plus people working in the industry. And we have small business people who have a payroll to meet and are paying their taxes. It became mainstream very, very quickly, and that has been interesting to me how fast a transition can take place.”
Seth Adler: Washington State Governor Jay Inslee joins us. Welcome to Cannabis Economy. I'm your host Seth Adler. Download episodes on CannEconomy.com, that's two n's and the word economy. Have a whole lot of direct insight from cannabis luminaries. So check out the new and updated CannEconomy.com. First, a word from MedMen and then governor and presidential candidate Jay Inslee.
Speaker 2: MedMen continues to expand its footprint on the cannabis landscape, opening new stores in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and the iconic Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. They've also opened a 45,000 foot, high tech cannabis cultivation and manufacturing facility in Nevada. The company has reached a one billion dollar valuation, making it the country's first cannabis unicorn and it's just the beginning. Learn how MedMen is building the future of cannabis today at MedMen.com.
Seth Adler: Governor Jay Inslee, thank you so much for having me here at the state capitol.
Jay Inslee: Welcome to what I think is the most beautiful capital and the most beautiful state, so ...
Seth Adler: Our view are unbiased, so we appreciate that.
Jay Inslee: Totally, totally.
Seth Adler: Yeah, exactly.
Jay Inslee: Well, here's my argument. Every state is beautiful. Certainly Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina are very beautiful states. My argument is we have a little bit of the beauty of all the other states in our state. So we've got Kansas wheat fields, we've got Alaska rain forest. We have California long beaches. We've got Maine rocky coastline. My argument is every state is beautiful and you can see it all in Washington State, so that's my argument.
Seth Adler: That's totally fair. You mentioned a number of states here and I'd like to come back to that. First, we'd love to-
Jay Inslee: Totally coincidentally.
Seth Adler: Indeed. First we'd love to uncover the history of cannabis, legal cannabis, in Washington State. It's not even a bird's eye view. You had a front row ... I mean, you didn't even have a seat. You were doing it. So thanks.
Jay Inslee: You Bet. This has been a major thing that's unique and actually in world history so you don't get to be involved in the first thing in world history very often. And that has happened in our state.
Seth Adler: I had the opportunity to talk to Governor Hickenlooper who everybody kind of knows. He wasn't such a fan going in. We'd love to hear what you were thinking before the vote in 2012 if you can remember back that far.
Jay Inslee: I did not support the initiative. I was running for governor, I had thoughts, "What is the message to the kids as I'm running for governor?" kind of issue and, "Is there going to be an issue of health questions for kids?" and I was concerned about that messaging aspect of it, but it has turned out that those concerns really have not been borne out, thankfully. We have not experienced increase youthful usage in any significance. We have not seen additional criminal behavior. We have not seen those concerns. So thankfully this, from a health perspective, has worked out very, very well. From many perspectives that we'll talk about in the state of Washington.
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