Former DNC And RNC Chairs Join One Of The World’s Largest Marijuana Companies
By Kyle Jaeger
December 13, 2018
One of the world’s largest marijuana companies announced the formation of an international advisory board on Thursday. Among those joining the team at Tilray are former Vermont
Gov. Howard Dean, who also served as the Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair, and
Michael Steele, who headed the Republican National Committee (RNC) and served as Maryland’s lieutenant governor.
That the former chairs of both major parties are entering the legal cannabis industry reflects the narrowing political divide over the issue. But it also seems to reflect a personal evolution on the issue for Dean, who two decades ago as governor of Vermont opposed even legalizing industrial hemp out of concern that it would lead to marijuana legalization.
”I don’t think it’s in anybody’s best interest to do that. It sends the wrong message to our kids,” he said at the time. “I think the principal interest of the advocates is to legalize marijuana.”
According to legalization advocates, Dean also effectively blocked a vote on a medical cannabis bill that was going through the Vermont legislature in 2002, repeatedly arguing that neither voters nor lawmakers should be able to implement a legal medical marijuana system because, to him, it was a public health decision and up to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to determine whether the plant had therapeutic value.
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