Former Democratic Senator Mike Gravel will serve as the new CEO of KUSH, a subsidiary of Cannabis Sativa, Inc. (OTCQB:CBDS). Headed by former New Mexico Governor and 2012 Libertarian Party presidential nominee Gary Johnson, Cannabis Sativa announced that KUSH will act as a separate business entity that will focus on the development and sale of recreational and medicinal marijuana products, including a lozenge called the “Kubby.” KUSH Executive V.P. and COO Michael Pickens announced that Gravel’s primary role as CEO would be to “direct the company to get products in states that will legally allow it.”
Gravel served as an Alaska Senator from 1969 to 1981, and has long been critical of the War on Drugs. “It’s so controversial because there’s a lot of stupid people locked into stupid policies,” he stated in 2007 during his bid for the democratic presidential nomination. “There are a lot of people on drugs all the time — what’s the big deal about it?” Indeed, Gravel noted that one reason he took the job at KUSH is that he “[feels] very deeply about the failure that is marijuana prohibition… Nixon is the one that put marijuana into a Schedule I. People forget that story, I lived through that. I thought it was horrible.”
The former Senator maintains that he will remain active in politics, stating that “it hasn’t changed my whole political posturing. I’ve been very active in the last month or so over the torture debate.” Gravel had called on Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO.) to put the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report into the public record in November, before the Committee released its executive summary of the report. Such a move would have echoed Gravel’s monumental 1971 entrance of 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers — the report detailing the Johnson Administration’s misleading of Congress and the public during the Vietnam War — into the congressional record, ensuring their publicity.
Cannabis Sativa’s chairman of the board Steve Kubby referred to Gravel as a “true American hero” in a statement, and went on to say that “Senator Gravel stood up to Nixon, stood up to the Pentagon, and now he is standing up to those in power who would keep the healthful benefits of cannabis from those who need them.”
Gavel’s straightforwardness has carried over to his work in the private sector. KUSH COO Michael Pickens noted that he has been “very active and outspoken” in his role at the Cannabis Sativa board of directors. “I specifically requested to work with him for his track record of taking action and holding people accountable in government, and now he gets to use those skills to advance another worthy project,” he added.
Sources:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/30/mike-gravel-marijuana_n_6396646.html
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/mike-gravel-kush-marijuana-113878.html
http://www.cnbc.com/id/102300821#.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore
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