SEC Ignores Federal Law, Lets Marijuana Biz Offer Stocks

The United States government is helping a California-based company perpetrate a crime by letting it offer public stocks in its marijuana business, even though the drug’s cultivation and sale are both illegal under federal law.

As unbelievable as it may seem, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the government agency responsible for enforcing the nation’s securities laws and protecting investors, is permitting a marijuana dealer to register shares. Pot may have been legalized—for medicinal and recreational use—in nearly two dozen states (including the District of Columbia), but it remains illegal under federal law. For a federal agency to approve its official sale is downright insane.

This perplexing news comes from a variety of sources, including a publication, Marijuana Business Daily, that professes to be the No. 1 information resource for the U.S. medical marijuana and retail cannabis industry. In a recent article it celebrates the SEC’s pot endorsement as a magnificent move that “could fuel investor interest in marijuana stocks and encourage dispensaries, cultivation businesses and edibles producers to go public.” These sorts of businesses have refrained from going public, the article points out, in large part because they’re unsure how the SEC would react. Now we know that the feds like the idea.

The cannabis trailblazer is Terra Tech and it’s based in Irvine California. Its vision is to help transform, through innovation, the global population through methods that are both sustainable as well as environmentally friendly. This is language taken straight from its company website. In it Terra Tech also claims to be pioneering the future by integrating the best of the natural world with technology to create sustainable solutions for food production, indoor cultivation, rare and exotic plants and agricultural research and development. It sounds like someone has been smoking something potent.

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