Both Republican majority and Democratic minority votes will be needed to pass medical marijuana in North Carolina. Three medical marijuana grow licensing models from Republican-controlled states are available.
Florida: Oligopoly requires government choosing a small number of well-capitalized sellers “on the merits”; requires vertical seed-to-sale integration; does not restrict cross-ownership. Senate Bill 3 follows this model, with 10 sellers.
Oklahoma/Mississippi: All comers get licenses. Oklahoma fee is $2,500 per license (currently under moratorium); Mississippi fees vary by size of operation. Amid excess, Oklahoma voters defeated extension of its program to recreational in a landslide on March 7.
Louisiana: Sole growing licensees are land grant Louisiana State University and (Historically Black) Southern University, analogous to State and A&T. They contract out some work.
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Other models for sharing the cannabis windfall exist.
California, Massachusetts, New York, and other states: Some “social equity licenses” are issued to benefit casualties of the War on Drugs. No program has succeeded yet.
Illinois and other states: A lottery among applicants who are deemed qualified is followed by litigation by applicants deemed unqualified.
Alaska: The Permanent Oil Dividend Fund gives each resident an equal check each year. But in Post-Soviet Russia, voucher privatization of assets failed because of permanent rather than annual privatization.
Patrick Oglesby, 919 619 8838, po@newrevenue.org, NC Bar #7944;
Center for New Revenue, http://www.newrevenue.org;
1830 North Lakeshore Drive, Chapel Hill NC 27514.
The Center for New Revenue 
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