How state officials snuck themselves into Georgia’s Hope Act, sticking taxpayers with the cost of regulating medical marijuana so officials can profit from its production

After five-years of effort, the Georgia Legislature passed Georgia’s Hope Act, which legalizes the cultivation of marijuana, processes it into “low” THC oil, and dispenses it to registered patients. The bills the House and Senate passed were entirely different and a conference committee could not resolve the differences without the help of several state leaders. Governor Brian Kemp told the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC):
 
"It was a long conference, too. You know, the speaker [of the House] and the lieutenant governor and I, and all the legislative leaders that were working on that issue, we were all working on that, which is a little bit unusual, I think. Most of the time, it's the legislators doing that with just direction from the different parties, but we were all actually in the same room ... got a lot done."
 
Last year’s legislature created a study committee on which sat the former president of Surterra, a $100 million marijuana company founded in Atlanta in 2014, who helped shape the House bill. Surterra’s chairman has told the press he is eager to get into the recreational marijuana business. Surterra contributed to several Georgia politicians’ campaigns during the 2018 election.
 
The Senate bill tried to put an end to that kind of back-room finagling by prohibiting any marijuana company that contributed to political campaigns from being eligible to apply for a marijuana cultivation or processing license for five years and to prohibit entirely any marijuana company that operates in a recreational marijuana state.
 
The Senate bill also prohibited any legislator, state-wide public official, or employee of a designated university or members of their families from subcontracting with a licensee to grow or process marijuana if they owned a marijuana company “wholly or in part.” Here’s the official language:
 
"No person licensed pursuant to this subsection shall subcontract for services for the cultivation or processing in any way of marijuana if the subcontractor, or any of the service providers in the chain of subcontractors, is owned wholly or in part by any state employee or member of a state employee’s immediate family, including but not limited to any legislator, state-wide public official, or employee of a designated university. For purposes of this subparagraph, the term ‘immediate family member’ means a spouse, child, sibling, or parent or the spouse of a child, sibling, or parent."
 
The Senate felt so strongly about this that it included this language twice in its bill (at lines 309-305 and again at lines 859-865).
 
Those men who were “actually all in the same room” did indeed get a lot done. They deleted the Senate’s language 1) prohibiting marijuana companies that contributed to political campaigns from applying for a license for five years and 2) prohibiting those who operate in fully legal states from ever being eligible.  
 
But they went a step further, changing with just four words the Senate language that prohibited public officials from taking part in the marijuana industry. The final bill reads:
 
"(c) No licensee shall subcontract for services for the cultivation or processing in any way of marijuana if the subcontractor, or any of the service providers in the chain of subcontractors, is owned wholly or in excess of 5 percent by any state employee or member of a state employee’s immediate family, including but not limited to any legislator, state-wide public official, or employee of a designated university. For purposes of this subparagraph, the term ‘immediate family member’ means a spouse, child, sibling, or parent or the spouse of a child, sibling, or parent (Lines 692-698, p 20 of the final bill)."
 
Because no tax was levied to pay for the costs of regulating a medical marijuana industry in Georgia, taxpayers will bear that burden so that state-wide public officials and legislators – maybe even some who were actually all in that same room – can make money growing and processing medical pot.