billionaires

When billionaires like Gautam Adani are accused of playing Monopoly with fraudulent valuations and hiding assets like it’s an Olympic sport, the world screams, “Scandal!” Meanwhile, in cannabis, it’s just another Tuesday. Wasn’t Green Thumb Industries (GTI) allowed to strip the anti-monopoly clauses from HB2911 in the State of Illinois, essentially legalizing their market dominance, just like Adani’s alleged financial shell games were overlooked until exposed?

The same schemes—phantom transactions, creative math, and shady deals—happen daily in cannabis. The difference? Regulators act like they didn’t see a thing, unless someone brings the noise. It’s like watching a bad magic trick, but instead of a rabbit, investors and workers disappear.

Imagine if Adani ran a cannabis company. He wouldn’t even need to bother hiding offshore accounts; he’d just call it “vertical integration” and get a round of applause. States would stamp his license before the ink dried, as long as nobody kicked up a fuss.

Cannabis is the Wild West where the sheriff’s on a coffee break. Billion-dollar fraud? That’s just “market growth.” Maybe we should start grading these scams like Olympic judges—at least then we’d get some entertainment out of it.

It’s time for the regulators to wake up and act, not snooze until the noise gets too loud to ignore.

Gautam, perhaps next time consider venturing into Illinois’ cannabis industry. It seems that, under Governor JB Pritzker’s administration, the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation and the Illinois Department of Agriculture permit certain multi-state operators to conduct business as usual, with minimal scrutiny.

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CannaConsigliere