‘The Case for Medical Cannabis Is Overwhelming’: The Week in Cannabis Quotes

Dave SchmaderPublished on March 16, 2018 · Last updated July 28, 2020

FILE - In this Monday, March 27, 2017, file photo, Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic and the Virgin Group, smiles after he arrived on a flight from London to Seattle, at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in Seattle. Branson’s prolific Virgin brand has spanned a broad range of businesses, including record stores, banks, phones, airlines and spaceships. He’s now trying to help Sprint revitalize its Virgin Mobile brand by transforming it into an iPhone-only carrier. He tells The Associated Press that Virgin is synonymous with really good quality, as is Apple, giving Virgin “a real chance to break in.” (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

From enlightened zillionaires to accidentally high executives, here are the week’s most notable cannabis quotables.

“Any drug policy should first and foremost seek to reduce harm, and pain, not increase it. As someone interested in evidence-based policy, I feel the case for medical cannabis is overwhelming.”
—Richard Branson, business magnate and member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, in a Virgin.com editorial

“You’re seeing regional players trying to figure out how to monopolize this market for not only THC, but any other compound coming out of marijuana that is beneficial. They’re trying to regulate all of that and bring it in under their umbrella.”
—Jordan Huffer, cofounder of Synergy Wellness and a partner in the lawsuit filed by the Patients and Producers Alliance, which seeks to declare Florida’s restrictive rules for granting medical cannabis growing and selling licenses unconstitutional

“We kind of see little villages, if you will, popping up around dispensaries that have different offerings…There’s almost unlimited amounts of different opportunities available.”
—Cindy Sovine, CEO of Denver’s Utopia Wellness Spa & Lounge, a proposed “marijuana spa offering CBD and THC-infused massages,” to Denver’s 9News

“According to research, New Jersey spends upwards of $140 million per year adjudicating low-level marijuana possession offenses. And, marijuana-related arrest rates are tilted three-to-one against African-Americans, even though rates of marijuana use are similar among races. These resources must have a better use, whether to tackle the trafficking of illegal guns, provide stronger community policing, or to crack the back of our opioid epidemic, which was devastating our urban centers long before it made headlines.”
—New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, in his 2019 Budget Address

“The money generated from legalizing marijuana would go a long way toward dealing with our state’s crumbling roads and bridges and help with the equally daunting challenge of fixing the broken New York City metropolitan transit system. Legalizing the adult use of marijuana is a cornerstone of my campaign for governor. I pledge that if I win election, it will be one of my major priorities because of the immediate economic benefits it can produce.”
—Joel Giambra, New York gubernatorial canadidate, to WIVB News, predicting that legal cannabis could bring the state $500 million per year

“I realized I was totally wasted.”
—An attendee of the Crypto Sanctum financial tech conference in NYC, where a whole bunch of people wound up accidentally very high due to the conference lunch featuring numerous cannabis-infused dishes and only the vaguest warnings of their potency, to Wired

In conclusion, an inspirational video. May we all attack our weekends with the same passion this young woman has for attacking cotton candy.