When Legal Isn’t Legal and Unlawful Is Quite Alright

Rocky Mountain High . . .not just for singing anymore. This week Denver voters voiced their approval to christen Denver as the first major city to legalize small/personal amounts of marijuana (up to an ounce), without a penalty . You remember marijuana right – it’s an illegal plant, whose leafs are illegally grown, illegally picked, illegally dried, illegally rolled into smoking papers and illegally smoked by happy consumers (yes, despite Denver’s most fervent wishes, marijuana is presently a controlled substance — illegal in all 50 states and under federal law).

Despite of,

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court, has just brightened the glassy eyed smile of wine aficionados and everyone else who enjoys a nice Merlot, by striking down what had been the ongoing attempts of several state governments to interfere with and prohibit their Citizen Consumers from purchasing their favorite out-of-state wine via the internet or otherwise.

Scott Woolley of Forbes does what few in the media have so succinctly done before; explain “Exhibit A” of the Stealth Cartel Partnerships, the 46 states government/Big Tobacco “Master Settlement Agreement” (“MSA”) – [read Master Partnership Agreement].

“This may be one of the most successful cartels ever,” that the opinion of Judge Dennis Jacobs, of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. In his February 2005 article “Trustbuster”, Woolley reports the opinions of esteemed justices such as Jacobs and others, as well as a renown antitrust attorney, David Dobbins, who declares that in his 50 years as a lawyer he has never seen a cartel so brazen: “If you’re an experienced antitrust lawyer [the MSA] just blows your mind.”

The concept of allocable share release (ASR), designed to make the MSA payments required of small companies, on a state-by-state basis, to be the same as major companies, is not easy to explain. It has proved much easier to misrepresent this provision of the MSA in the 39 states that have repealed ASR.

Attempting to maintain the price cartel the MSA effectively established for them, major cigarette manufacturers:
➢ misrepresent ASR as an unintended loophole.
➢ portray ASR as a tax program rather than a legal settlement.
➢ demagogue companies that get an ASR as “cheap cigarettes makers who sell their products to kids” even though over 90% of underage smokers acquire brands manufactured by the majors.