I’m excited to share with BLPB readers that my article, Entrepreneurial Regulatory Legal Strategy: The Case of Cannabis, published in the American Business Law Journal, is now available.  It is one of a series of articles related to a 2020 Symposium on Legal, Ethical, and Compliance Issues in Emerging Markets: Cannabis in the States, sponsored by the Spears School of Business Center for Legal Studies & Business Ethics at Oklahoma State University and the American Business Law Journal.   

Here’s its abstract:

This article develops the concepts of regulatory legal strategy, a resource-based view of government agencies, and regulatory entrepreneurship. These ideas are explored through a case study of the limited (if any) access that legal cannabis-related businesses have to the banking system due to the clash between federal law and laws in those states that have legalized some uses of cannabis. This article argues that regulators’ entrepreneurial regulatory legal strategies can have a material impact on regulated entities and give them a competitive advantage. To demonstrate, this article claims that regulators’ adoption of permissive regulatory legal strategies has facilitated access of some cannabis-related businesses to the banking system. Conversely, if regulators adopted obstructive regulatory strategies, this would act as a constraint on such access in the future, even if Congress resolves the federalism issue largely responsible for the current limitations these businesses face.

I encourage readers to also check out the additional articles in this special volume, which include:

Kimberly A Houser & Janine Hiller’s Medical Marijuana Registries: A Painful Choice?

Stephanie Geiger-Oneto & Robert Sprague’s Cannabis Regulatory Confusion and Its Impact on Consumer Adoption

Aubree L. Walton, Kaimee Kellis, William E. Tankersley & Rikinkumar S. Patel’s Cultivating Evidence-Based Pathways for Cannabis Product Development: Implications for Consumer Protection

Mark J. Cowan, Taxing Cannabis on the Reservation