Who is the Wizard behind the curtain?
According to campaign finance reports, the campaign pushing to put pot shops on every corner here in Montana has close to $7 million in the bank. They are using this money to put ads on television and the radio, put up billboards, and sending mailers trying to convince Montanans that commercializing marijuana is somehow a good idea.
Taking a deeper look on this $7 million reveals something shocking, however. Less than half of one percent of the money raised by New Approach Montana came from Montanans. Let’s say that again: 99% of the funding for the pro-legalization campaign has come from out of state.
Doubling down even further, the majority of this money — at least $4.8 million — comes from a shady, dark money group called North Fund. Who is this group? NBC Montana called the Washington D.C. office listed on their finance forms and the individual who picked up the phone “didn’t recognize the name of the group or its treasurer.”
Furthermore, the Commissioner of the Office of Political Practices told this group that they had until September 30th to report their list of donors. That date came and went, and North Fund is refusing to comply with Montana state law.
Thankfully, the COPP is holding this dark money group’s feet to the fire. On Monday, Commissioner Mangan requested detailed documentation of North Fund’s political activities in Colorado, Washington, D.C., New Hampshire, and Missouri as well as documentation into grants the group distributed in 2019 and August of this year totaling $1.8 million and $25 million, respectively.
It is critical that we realize what is at play here. The marijuana industry has spent millions over the last few years lobbying at the federal level to legalize marijuana. Now, using dark money groups with untraceable donations, they are dumping millions of dollars in Montana to try and expand their scheme here.
The groups spending this money don’t live here and won’t have to be on the roads with stoned drivers. They won’t have to deal with increased drug trafficking and pot grows polluting our public lands. They won’t see our young people using drugs at increased rates or have to deal with the workplace issues that pot legalization brings.
Instead, these industry folks and their investors will be laughing to the bank while Montanans pay the price. As we have stated before, the “New Approach Montana” folks are lying on their promotional material when they say that legalization hasn’t resulted in increased youth use, more impaired driving, and crime. Now, they are refusing to comply with state law and using backdoor tactics to buy their way into a new state.
This isn’t how we do things here in Montana, and we should all see through the smokescreen. On Election Day, kick Big Pot, its dark money, and its lies, to the curb.
Stephen A Zabawa is Treasurer of Wrongformontana.com