Marijuana Venture: What do you find most exciting about the state of the cannabis industry right now?
Beth Stavola: I’m very excited about the news of (former Speaker of the House) John Boehner jumping into the cannabis space, because I think in 2011-2012 he was one of the Republicans who would never legalize and said that he would never change his mind. Just the fact that the he joined the advisory board of Acreage Holdings. I think this speaks a lot about where this movement is going. And with 64% of Americans feeling that not just medical cannabis, but adult-use cannabis should be legal, it’s something that Democrats and Republicans right now seem to be able to agree on — and there’s not a lot of other topics that we can say that about in our government right now.
Another thing I’m excited about is the mergers and acquisitions activity that is going on. It seems like some of the bigger players are doing mergers of equals or just looking for a bigger national footprint. So I see a lot of that activity going on, which is exciting.