The new ethical shopping standard every marijuana user should try in 2022

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and was republished with permission.

Somebody once told me that the only real power people have is where they spend their money. In other words, the real power of the consumer lies in the choice of supplier. In simpler terms, if no one is buying your stuff, you are not making any money.

This is a consumer superpower, and although individually it may appear that one person’s actions cannot possibly have a material impact on a business. The truth is that even if a person “finds a reason not to buy” from a particular brand, it could mean that “other people” might find other reasons as well. When enough reasons come up to avoid a particular brand, a business essentially dies due to a lack of revenue.

Photo by Hillary Kladke / Getty Images

As cannabis users, we should keep this in mind when we enter a new cannabis era. While the victory for legal cannabis is still being fought at the federal level, big corporations are rushing into the local legalized landscapes, trying to devour the market before others get a chance to participate.

Firms like Acreage Holdings, where a Mr. John Boehner – former Republican House Speaker and staunch anti-cannabis who turned for a board position at the company – are suing local governments to prevent them from establishing “local” residence clauses “in the frame of cannabis legalization. In essence, these clauses would mean that a license holder would have to “have lived in the area” for a period of time in order to maintain quality.

This would immediately make it impossible for large corporations like Acreage Holdings to operate in these areas. Because of this, they sued Maine District over these clauses last year, as reported in Forbes:

A federal judge in the District of Maine ruled that the residency rules violated the U.S. Constitution’s dormant trade clause, which reserves the power to regulate interstate trade – which, although interstate cannabis is illegal, extends to marijuana.

Though Acreage Holdings constitutionally has a lawsuit and would likely win in appeals too. The point is, large faceless corporations tend to try to circumvent or bend the rules in their favor, and to believe that it would be different with cannabis would be naive to say the least.

This brings us to the starting point: the superpower of the consumer!

Ethical cannabis purchase

You cannot blame a shark for mistaking a human for food if the human swims where the shark is eating. Nor can you expect Wall Street millionaires to be ethical business practices when they can get the law up and running in their favor. Hence, the responsibility for its consumption rests right on the shoulders of the consumer – you shouldn’t be comfortable buying weed from companies that put profit above people.

Making sure where you get your weed should be a concern these days. While I’m not saying corporate weed is a bad thing, I think there could be many benefits to having a corporate cannabis company spend money on research and development to develop products that serve a broader segment of the population. However, these companies must adhere to an ethical standard.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

We are currently in a major social change and in this passing moment we have the opportunity to completely rewire the system. This also includes how we as consumers interact with companies. If you find that a particular company is treating its employees badly or another cannabis company is sacrificing, then it should be your duty as an ethical consumer to stop using its products.

As mentioned earlier, this may not be enough to cause significant damage in an individual case. However, you would be surprised how many people follow suit when they learn the reasons for your personal boycott.

“Hey man, we should definitely buy them!”

“Nah man, f ‘that brand!”

“Oops, why?”

“Well, they have Xed, some Ys, in the Zs …”

And quite simply you start a domino effect and cause a sales breakdown against the offensive brand. It really is the most effective way to crack down on companies that violate social trust or are trying to outsmart the system.

RELATED: How Accessibility Is Destroying The Legal Marijuana Industry In America

It is for this reason that it is important to be informed about the products you are purchasing. Blindly trusting companies when it comes to the products they sell is an ignorant approach to being an ethical consumer. The fact is, many of us still buy shit knowing that it is tied to human suffering – as long as it’s quick and cheap, a little bit of suffering can go a long way!

Photo by Zummolo / Getty Images

However, when it comes to your weed there is a sense of purity that you want to keep in the market. If we let cannibal corporations dominate the cannabis market, we’ll end up with a handful of monster corporations with little local competition. When that happens, these big corporations will try to buy out intellectual property and make it virtually impossible to manufacture their own varieties or competing products.

RELATED: Is Big Pharma Weed Coming With Pfizer’s Recent Purchase?

They will do this by lobbying to change laws and make the legal timing to enter the market unsustainably high so the average Jane and Joe might not consider investing in the market.

So if you don’t like big corporations coming in and raping the cannabis industry, you may need to do some research on the brands you use and find out if the parent companies are allies of cannabis or just allies of profit.

I’m not saying to boycott or not – it’s entirely up to you. However, you should make these decisions as best you can.

This article originally appeared on Cannabis.net and was republished with permission.