CO-OP REALITIES FOR CANNABIS

Re "Who owns the Co-op?" (SN&R Letters, July 28) and "The 420" (SN&R
Supplement):

When a co-op incorporates with the secretary of state, the co-op must
state whether it is a "member" or "non-member" corporation, referring
to the membership's relationship as either voting or nonvoting in
corporate decision-making. REI has voting members and Costco doesn't.
Membership voting can get very cumbersome, especially in the early
development of a co-op, with problems with like making quorums or
enduring mob pressure.

People are often unclear of the concepts involved in who actually
"owns the co-op," and nowhere is that more evident than in SN&R's
slick new "The 420" section, where dispensary "owners" are noted and
quoted amongst the ads for medical-cannabis "collectives," "co-ops"
and "nonprofits." Nobody "owns" a collective, or co-op, or nonprofit,
or a Boy Scout troop, or a blood bank, or a Moose Lodge. These
entities are run by a group of individuals, as officers and directors
and even voting members, and anyone who claims to own a distribution
center of medical marijuana sounds like they are on really shaky legal
ground in that [Senate Bill] 420 did not provide for proprietorship in
medical-marijuana production and distribution. Maybe an article in
"The 420" with more specific details of the technical parts of the law
and how that law is shaping and evolving would help clear things up.

Missing also is information about the local politics, including which
municipalities oppose the legislative intent of S.B. 420 of promoting
consistency among the counties and exposing some of their efforts to
thwart patient access. There are important and exciting things going
on, and all I see in "The 420" are an extraordinary number of
expensive ads and a couple of goofy stoner articles.

Matt Vaughn

Rescue