The Present Indicative, 2 December 2025
My Current Mood: Sympathy for the Devil
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
-Satan, Paradise Lost: Book 1 (1674 version), lns 262-263
A year ago I attended MJBizCon. It was the 13th annual global cannabis business conference and tradeshow in Las Vegas. The 14th annual meeting starts today, and I am forced to reflect on the state of an industry growing stale from stalled momentum. But let us not consider the Las Vegas Convention Center half full or half empty. As they say in China, “机遇与挑战并存” (“opportunities and challenges coexist”). Let us consider the circumstances and evidence before we cast judgement.
A mind not to be chang’d by Place or Time.
The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
It was just over 18 months ago when I wrote my first article tied to President Biden’s public stand with the Justice Department to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I to a Schedule III drug under federal law. Still controlled, just not lumped in with heavyweights like heroin and LSD. I had a personal and professional interest on the topic. One of my sons developed a severe epilepsy diagnosis ten years ago next month, and while it took a year to regulate his daily seizures with the right pharmaceuticals, one of the components that re-established balance was medically-approved state-regulated non-intoxicating cannabinoids.
Pediatric cases should require scrutiny, but the technology in place (or lack thereof) belabored the bureaucratic application for his approval and neurological stability. And it got me thinking about a baby industry growing beyond medical to recreational use state by state with 21st-century technology to inventory, extract, market, and distribute a product trying to catch up with socially “approved” industries like alcohol, tobacco, and gambling. If we’re saving lives with cannabis then should we treat it like a Cheech & Chong sketch?
What matter where, if I be still the same,
And what I should be, all but less then he
Whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least
Following a comparison of cannabis rescheduling to online gambling, I then looked at cannabis supply chain (through the lens of Jaws), and self-identification in an industry determined to stay adolescent. All of these led to a press pass to attend (and represent) last year’s MJBizCon in my previous role as managing editor of the Datos Insights Banking & Payments Bulletin.
The second term of Donald Trump was one month away, but no one could foretell what might happen when two things would need to take place for any progress in American investment: federal rescheduling and SAFE banking.
What I said then remains the same today. Cannabis is still a Schedule I drug. Rescheduling could provide immediate tax relief through the elimination of IRS 280E tax restrictions. And what neither Biden nor Trump have delivered beyond public deliberating may finally get its day in court. The Supreme Court. As they determine this month to hear a constitutional challenge on federal cannabis prohibition.
Both SAFE (Secure and Fair Enforcement) and SAFER (Secure And Fair Enforcement Regulation) Banking Acts cannot get past Congress to provide protections for federally regulated financial institutions. Without a safe harbor for banks, credit unions, and other financial services providers to serve these state-licensed entities, financial institutions and payment providers won’t engage with the industry in the United States.
Mind you, these card networks and international banks can be used to purchase medical AND recreational cannabis in Canada. But their US absence leaves an industry expected to reach almost $45 billion domestically without digital transactions between the consumer and retailer to alleviate the handling of cash. I didn’t like coming home with Saturday night tips when I waited tables back in the day, and I’m not a $45-billion industry.
We shall be free; th’ Almighty hath not built
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence:
Here we may reign secure, and in my choyce
Rescheduling could offer short‑term operational benefits, and SAFER Banking could provide longer‑term structural improvements in capital access and payment processing. The question is whether we as a nation are mature enough to handle it. I’ve spent the last 10 years attending conferences for financial services and insurance. For reasons of socio-political advantage, those conferences remain white and male (mostly). MJBizCon and others like it are a spectrum of race, gender, and class. Walking the exhibit halls and attending the panels provide perspective to foster social justice and equity as much as SAFE banking.
And yet we backslide. As we confront new problems that come with social adoption, the impulse is to prohibit instead of educate. Re-criminalizing did wonders for alcohol consumption in 1919. Can’t wait to see what it could do in 2026 for cannabis.
In Other News…
Speaking of education, I wanted to learn about another new industry that can disrupt society as we know it: crypto. It’s more than just currency, and my guest to tell us all about it in next week’s episode of The Future Indicative is Steve Estrada. Steve joined the industry a couple years ago and has been exploring its potential to build community ever since. Steve is concerned about the barriers we build, and never get beyond, without embracing change and addressing its unintended consequences.
The last interesting thing that I’ve read is actually something that I’m reading right now. It’s a book called Notes on Being a Man, by Scott Galloway. It’s a book about the role of young men in society. There is a growing trend of teenagers to men in their early 20s—the greatest number out of the workforce in a very long time, a lower number of young men going to college, getting an education. Alarming rates of suicide or death by sadness–whether it’s alcohol or drugs or whatever. And it’s looking at what happened to young men in this country. Why are they falling to the wayside. And it’s not just about fair and equal gender roles, and women being in a different position than they were 30 years ago. It’s why are young men falling aside. And the results are suicide, or unemployment, or these incels. And as we both have young boys, it’s obviously a topic that’s really near and dear to our hearts.
One of the primary drivers is the disappearance of manufacturing jobs—whether through outsourcing or automation. You’re seeing a lot of those jobs that gave middle-class men an opportunity to have a middle-class lifestyle are gone. And you take that with rising housing costs and everything, there’s a lack of a future. Combine that with algorithms saying, You can have an online life. And disappearing into a phone as opposed to getting out into the world—getting young men to live life, get out there, go do things.
Forty percent of guys under 25 have never approached a woman and asked them out. And you gotta go do it. You gotta go do things and live life. And so how do we take these young men and reframe the idea of protector and provider in the modern society?
Provider means, if your wife is the better breadwinner, stepping into a role of provider in other ways. And a protector doesn’t just mean chivalrously protecting your partner. It’s protecting society: being a Little League coach, getting out there, being part of a community that is raising healthy young men in a modern society that has changed in a lot of ways.
I’m just getting into it, but it’s a problem that needs to be addressed. And it does have some parallels to what we’re going to talk about, because a lot of it has to do with technology and the world changing from traditional norms.
Can’t wait to share that next week. A few other resources from that episode include:
Jim Cantore’s Top Three Hurricanes
The Spectacular Rise and Fall of WeWork
Chris Noth Teams Up With Ryan Reynolds For Peloton Ad | THR News
Taco Bell Demolition Man 1993 Ad
Enjoy!
Alex Effgen