"담배회사가 마리화나 시장에 진입하나 ?" (인용)

[환희]

자본주의에서 <자본>을 능가하는 인간적 가치란 사실 없는 것 같습니다. "Money talks."(맞아요)

자본이 법을 다스리고 법이 경제를 다스리고 경제가 사람을 다스립니다. 어느날 갑자기 불법이던

pot 이 자고일어나니 "제한된 합법적"으로 발표가 되더니 이제 아래 기사처럼 <법>을 바꾸면 어떨까라는

뉘앙스로 "모든 대량생산 시스템을 갖춘 담배회사가 이제 겨우 걸음마수준인 마리화나 영세시장들을 집어

삼키려는 것 아닌가 ?"라는 공포감을 시장에 던지고 있다는 따끈따끈한 뉴스가 올라와 있군요. 아마도

필립모리스가 최전방 소총수 총알받이로 총대를 멜것 같은데.....그뒤로 줄줄이 ...밀려 오겠지만요.

죄우지간 마리화나에대한 "부정적 이미지"로 세뇌된 우리들에겐 하루아침 인식전환은 어렵겠지만 그 역시

"자본의 힘"이 춤출때마다 너무나도 쉽게 그 인식조차도 쉽게 양보해 버리는 시대에 우리는 실제로 살고 있으니

그리 큰 문제는 아니죠.  사건의 핵심은 강자가 이제 "총집에서 총을 만지작 거리고 있다." 이거죠.

그간 마리화나의 단점만 부각시켰다가 갑자기 장점만을 대중에게 <이미지업 마케팅> 그것도 천문학적 자금

으로 탱크처럼 우리집 안방으로 밀고 들어 온다면 우리는 그럼 또 그랗게 바뀌어 버린 세상에 어느덧 편하게(?)

적응되어 살아가게 되니 말입니다.

가만히 있어보자~~ 그럼 장사꾼에게는 어떤 영향이 있을까 ?

그럼 담배가게에서 이제 "마리화나 담배"도 버젓이 팔게되는 시대가 온다는 이야기이네요. 시장의 판도가

바뀌고 제품구성과 수익률 구도재편에 어떤 영향을 미칠지 ....."아 그러고 보니 ........

멘톨시가렛(Menthol향나는 담배류) 들이 거의 대부분 그리고 e-cigarette (향내나는 액체가 담긴 전자담배)

그것을 미리 시험해 보는 "pilot 시제품" 이었구나."를 이제 신문을 보고나니 의구심을 갖게 하는군요.

이왕(?) 내친김에  동네가게에서 맥주를 팔게 해준다는 또 다른 자본가의 목소리가 더해지면 ....죄우지간

장사하는 입장에서는  장기적인 <두개의 지렛대>를 갖추게 되는 것은 아닐지.....돌고도는 세상 참!

장사는 하루아침에 쌓고 허는 모래성 쌓기가 아니니  느긋한 마음으로 낚시하는 강태공 마음으로 해야죠.

그러다 보면 반드시 귀인을 만나고 좋은 날을 만납니다.

오늘하루도 건승하세요.

(인용)

Will Big Tobacco become Big Marijuana?

Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY 7:01 a.m. EDT April 11, 2015

Rhiannon Griffith-Bowman smokes an e-cigarette in San Rafael, Calif. Some pot entrepreneurs worry that tobacco companies want to make moves on their turf.(Photo: Justin Sullivan, Getty Images)

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DENVER — While federal law makes their entire industry illegal, many marijuana store owners, growers and retailers fear something completely different: Big Tobacco.

Today, most legal recreational marijuana operations are small, limited to a single state and barred from ever getting large by regulators who want to keep a close eye on the fast-growing industry. But those small operators struggle to get bank loans for expansion, often produce an inconsistent product and sometimes have no idea how to balance supply and demand for their crops.

And many fear that tobacco companies, with their deep pockets, longstanding experience dealing with heavy government regulation, and relationships with generations of farmers will jump into the burgeoning marijuana market. At marijuana business conventions and in private conversations, it sometimes seems like everyone has heard a rumor about Big Tobacco getting in.

"I think there's a ton of paranoia that they're buying up warehouses and signing secret deals," said Chris Walsh, the editor of Marijuana Business Daily, an industry publication.

USA TODAY

Vaporizers, e-cigs of the pot world, are booming

It's not just paranoia: Tobacco companies for generations have talked privately about getting into the weed business.

This past summer, researchers poring through more than 80 million pages of previously secret tobacco industry documents found that Big Tobacco has long had interest in pot.

“I think there's a ton of paranoia that they're buying up warehouses and signing secret deals.”

Chris Walsh, Marijuana Business Daily

"Since at least the 1970s, tobacco companies have been interested in marijuana and marijuana legalization as both a potential and a rival product," researchers Rachel Ann Barry, Heikki Hiilamo and Stanton Glantz wrote in a June 2014 paper published in the Milbank Quarterly, which focuses on population health and health policy. "As public opinion shifted and governments began relaxing laws pertaining to marijuana criminalization, the tobacco companies modified their corporate planning strategies to prepare for future consumer demand.

"In many ways, the marijuana market of 2014 resembles the tobacco market before 1880, before cigarettes were mass produced using mechanization and marketed using national brands and modern mass media," they wrote. "Legalizing marijuana opens the market to major corporations, including tobacco companies, which have the financial resources, product design technology to optimize puff-by-puff delivery of a psychoactive drug (nicotine), marketing muscle, and political clout to transform the marijuana market."

The researchers entitled their paper "Waiting for the Opportune Moment: The Tobacco Industry and Marijuana Legalization."

Today, spokesmen for Altria Group (MO) and R.J. Reynolds (RAI) said their companies have no plans to enter the legal pot marketplace. Altria is the new name for Philip Morris.

USA TODAY

Marijuana and tobacco: How times have changed

"We continually eval‎uate opportunities for portfolio enhancement but focus our efforts on companies and products designed to meet the preferences of adult tobacco consumers and companies where we feel we could add value," said Richard Smith of RJR. "None of Reynolds American's operating companies is eval‎uating entering the U.S. market with commercial brands of marijuana."

Jeffrey Friedland, chief executive of the international cannabis investment and development company INTIVA, said it's unlikely tobacco companies ever seriously considered marijuana as a product. The tobacco documents archive, turned over to the public following the 1998 national tobacco settlement, show that cigarette companies periodically discussed marijuana as both a potential threat and possible product, including combining pot with menthol cigarettes.

Tobacco companies now are trying to move into e-cigarettes. Many marijuana stores sell e-cigarettes filled with marijuana oil. (Photo: Getty Images)

"I don't think they probably got far, maybe just to the in-house legal counsel's desk," Friedland said. "They're not going to do anything until you  have an act of Congress and it's legal."

Tobacco companies already are facing stiff government regulation and taxation and likely worry that moving into marijuana would bring additional scrutiny when they're trying to move into e-cigarettes, which aren't taxed and regulated the same way as traditional cigarettes, he said. Many marijuana stores sell e-cigarettes filled with marijuana oil.

The idea of Big Marijuana runs contrary to the counter-culture attitude of many marijuana industry insiders, especially those who honed their specific strains and growing techniques underground. For them, marijuana is more than a product, and it's hard to accept that their labor of love could be commoditized, homogenized and sold without the personal grower-to-user relationship many marijuana stores in Colorado strive to maintain.

The reality of the modern world suggests otherwise, said President and CEO Derek Peterson of Terra Tech, a California-based company that makes hydroponic greenhouse equipment for both traditional and marijuana growers and is opening medical marijuana facilities in Nevada. Peterson, a former Wall Street investment banker, also operates a dispensary in California and says the economics ultimately favor large companies.

"We're a mass-produced society, from the food we eat to the television we watch," he said. "Ultimately, big alcohol or big tobacco is going to come into this space. I just can't imagine that won't happen."

USA TODAY

How pot tax compares with other 'sin' taxes

Because state-legalized marijuana remains a patchwork of rules, few companies are operating in more than a single state. That's an advantage for the group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which opposes the mainstreaming of marijuana.

Former Congressman Patrick Kennedy co-founded the group with the message, in part, that Big Tobacco wants in on Big Marijuana. SAM co-founder Kevin Sabet said Americans would be naïve to think tobacco companies won't try to use the same techniques they long used to market to kids.

“They're (tobacco companies) not going to do anything until you have an act of Congress and it's legal.”

Jeffrey Friedland, INTIVA

"We're going to see the nightmare repeat," he said. "It's one thing to say you don't want see someone to go to prison for having a joint in their pocket. It's another thing to have Philip Morris-type tactics."

Election of a conservative president could alter marijuana legalization efforts radically, Walsh said. President Barack Obama's administration generally has taken a hands-off approach in states that have legalized recreational marijuana, but that could quickly change.

Also a possibility: Our next president could open to the door even wider to legalization by pushing the Food and Drug Administration to remove marijuana's listing as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, he said.

Meanwhile, Friedland said tobacco companies likely are taking a wait-and-see approach.

"I think they're freaked out and they're not going to touch it because it will bring down the wrath of governments on them until it's legal," he said. "And then I think they end up owning the industry."

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