D.C.’s pot expo: Less Cheech and Chong, more Berkshire Hathaway

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D.C.’s pot expo: Less Cheech and Chong, more Berkshire Hathaway

By John Woodrow Cox February 28
@JohnWoodrowCox

In a chandeliered banquet hall not far from the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, a man with a Duke MBA and a Wall Street background offered the same sort of tips often given to aspiring entrepreneurs in places like this one: develop a clear business plan; raise enough capital to weather setbacks; find a niche and own it.

Listening were 150 or so people packed into rows of cushioned red-and-gold chairs at the District’s first “Cannabis Academy,” an event perfectly timed to capi­tal­ize on the rush from the city’s newly legalized marijuana-growing marketplace. But the stereotypical images of stoner culture — leaf-adorned Bob Marley flags and smoky photos of piled-high pot — were, by design, nowhere in sight at the Holiday Inn. The crowd-members, more gray-haired than long-haired, sipped coffee and thumbed through 100-plus page workbooks with categories such as “Legal” and “Accounting & Merchant Services.”

Less Cheech and Chong, more Berkshire Hathaway.

And for good reason. Attendees had paid up to $299 each for instruction on how to get rich, not high, in an industry that a recent report said could generate $35 billion a year by 2020 if the wave of marijuana legalization continues.

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