From Montel Williams to Miracle-Gro, Medical Cannabis Gets Big-Name Support

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Ok, it’s time to connect the dots from the past few weeks and see if we can see the larger picture. If you haven’t noticed, a lot of recognizable names – including celebrities, lawmakers and a company with a household name – have been tied to medical marijuana as of late.

Let’s go over these, one by one:

– Scotts Miracle-Gro: The Ohio-based publicly traded lawn and garden giant is actively exploring opportunities in the medical marijuana market, according to the company’s chief executive officer. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Miracle-Gro CEO Jim Hagedorn has this to say: “I want to target the pot market. There’s no good reason we haven’t.” This ranks as the first time a major company has said it intends to capitalize on opportunities in medical marijuana.

– Montel Williams: The former TV talk show host – who has long touted the effects of medical marijuana in dealing with multiple sclerosis – is preparing to open his own dispensary in Sacramento. We’ve seen plenty of celebrities pump pot before, but this could be the first time that one of them actually is getting directly involved in the medical marijuana industry.

– Miss America: As we wrote about in a previous post, the finalist from California in the Miss America pageant was asked about whether marijuana should be legalized. Five years ago, anything short of a “no” would have likely killed her chances. Not so today: She offered an ambiguous answer but said it probably should be legal from a medical perspective….and she went on to win the pageant.

-Lawmakers Ron Paul and Barney Frank: These two Congressmen – one from each side of the aisle, at that – introduced a bill last week to essentially end the federal ban on marijuana, allowing states to therefore choose how they want to approach the issue. It ranks as the first bill of its kind presented to Congress since the federal government outlawed the drug in the 1930s.

And then you have Justin Timberlake, who this month admitted to smoking marijuana in an article in Playboy, though not for medical purposes.

Sure, that last one is a bit of a stretch, given that I want to focus on medical pot. But it fits nicely into the larger picture.

And what is that larger picture, you ask? Envision it as a pot leaf blanketing the United States.

In just the past few weeks, marijuana has rocketed into the mainstream and taken a prominent position in the public’s consciousness. What remains to be seen is if this will just be a blip on the radar – a type of unexplained flurry of related events – or if this is a taste of what’s to come.

Will we see other household names throw their hats into the medical marijuana ring? Will more Wall Street behemoths look to medical pot for profit and earnings growth?

At some point, you have to figure that medical marijuana – and the very idea of pot – will become so engrained in our society that it will cease to be a big deal.