Big Marijuana $pend$ Big Money for Big Gun$ Against Pot $hop$ Ban

Marijuana entrepreneurs have hired a national, professional political consulting company – Five Corners Strategies – to fight Opt Out Newton’s grassroots citizens campaign to keep recreational pot shops from opening in Newton.

Five Corners Strategies is a national political strategy firm, with offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago and Boston. According to the company’s website, Five Corners Strategies has a special focus on working for pot entrepreneurs. The co-founder of Five Corners Strategies even specifically highlighted Newton’s ballot questions in his company’s website marketing the company’s services to pot entrepreneurs in a post titled “Cannabis Means Business”.

The consulting company has already successfully influenced other marijuana local control questions in Massachusetts. The company’s website boasts that they are so proficient at influencing local policies that it took them just 8 days to plan and execute a successful campaign to kept Bridgewater from exercising local control to impose a total ban on marijuana establishments. They influenced the Bridgewater city council to ban all marijuana establishments except their client’s. They secured a monopoly for their client, allowing the client to run a medical marijuana dispensary and a cultivation facility in Bridgewater.

Five Corners Strategies’ co-founder, Tom Ahern, has confirmed that his company has been hired by the Respect the Vote (“RtV”) ballot committee to influence Newton’s local ballot question voting. RtV’s Chairman & Treasurer is Victor Chiang, the hedge fund investor who is an owner of the company that wants to open a recreational pot shop at Elliot Street and Rt. 9 (Cypress Tree Management). Mr. Chiang is also the Founder and Managing Partner of Weston Roots Management LLC, a marijuana cultivator. Mr. Chiang resides in one of the 100+ Massachusetts communities that have already banned recreational pot shops, so there won’t be one near his home.

Here in Newton, Five Corners Strategies is deploying professional, paid door-to-door canvassers, armed with sophisticated live-time reporting apps on their mobile devices, to knock on doors across the City and distribute flyers. They have also spent thousands of dollars on sending a full-page glossy mailer City-wide. Only the pot shop interests that have hired them know the full range of professional services that Five Corners Strategies has been engaged to provide to sway the outcome of Newton's local ballot question voting. According to the Five Corners Strategies website, the company runs “soup to nuts” local ballot campaigns, as well as working to influence municipal city councils and state agencies and legislatures on how they regulate the company's clients. Here are some quotes (emphasis added) from the company’s website:

· Cannabis is big business right now…. Last year, the industry generated nearly $9 billion in sales in the U.S. …and is on track for $11 billion in 2018, and $32 billion globally.

· In the Massachusetts city of Newton, the presence of recreational-use marijuana … hangs on a citizens’ Opt Out ballet question …, and a second question that may or may not supersede it….

· Numerous other Bay State communities are rushing municipal bans to the ballot or local town meetings. The lesson learned is that even though voters approved adult use and sales, not all citizens want the next dispensary in their town.

· …[S]mart cannabis executives have to keep a watchful eye on local regulations, and ways to have a voice in shaping public opinion.

· … Every vote, every ballot question, every town meeting, has the potential to make or break a cannabis company’s chance of expanding their business — or opening in a community at all.

Opt Out Newton is a genuinely grassroots, local Newton citizens effort. It collected nearly 7,000 Newton voters’ signatures on a petition to put the question on the ballot to prohibit recreational pot shops from opening in Newton. A group of City Councilors, without collecting any voters’ signatures, also placed a question on the local ballot that would open Newton to recreational pot shops, starting with between 2 and 4 pot shops. While the 2-4 ballot question is being promoted as a “limit” on the number of recreational pot shops in Newton, the City Councilor sponsors of the “2-4” ballot question made it clear when they pushed the measure through the City Council that the number can be increased at any time without another vote by Newton’s citizens.

Five Corners Strategies and the marijuana investors who have hired them are correct about this: Every vote counts! Newton voters need to make their voices heard at the ballot box to exercise truly local control.

Early voting is under way and Election Day is Tuesday, November 6^th.