Livia Gershon | Longreads | July 2019 | 8 minutes (1,983 words) Last month, shareholders of Canopy Growth, the world’s biggest cannabis company, agreed to a proposed merger with Acreage Holdings, the largest weed business in the United States. The deal, worth $3.4 billion, will take effect if and when the drug becomes legal at the federal level in the U.S., creating a massive international player in a rapidly expanding, newly legal industry. Meanwhile, as The Intercept reported , Fate Winslow, a homeless black man who sold $20 of weed in 2008, remains in prison on a life sentence, under Louisiana’s three-strikes law. Winslow is confined to a dorm with more than 80 other prisoners, double-bunked with no air conditioning in the heat of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The contrast is especially striking because John Boehner, former U.S. House speaker and a longtime opponent of legalizing cannabis, serves on Acreage’s board of advisors. Boehner’s jump, from fighting legal weed...
