"Profile: Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM)"
The national organization at the top of the chain. Founded in 2013, headquartered in Virginia, and the best-funded opponent of legalization in the country, with a transparency campaign it has resisted applying to itself.
Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) is the national organization at the top of the structure behind the Texas campaign.
Origins and leadership
SAM was established in January 2013 by former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, drug-policy advisor Kevin A. Sabet, and writer David Frum, formed in direct response to the 2012 ballot measures that legalized cannabis in Colorado and Washington. Sabet, a former advisor in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy across three administrations, serves as president and CEO. Kennedy remains a co-founder and honorary advisor. The organization is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, and operates state affiliates and coalitions across the country.
Funding
SAM describes itself as a nonpartisan alliance funded mainly by small donors and grants, and Sabet has said it takes no money from corporations or opioid manufacturers. Those are the organization’s own statements; the documented friction, below, is that it has demanded funding disclosure from its opponents while resisting it for itself. Beyond those statements, detailed donor information is limited, in part by the organization’s own choices about disclosure (below). Its annual IRS filings are available through ProPublica for anyone wanting the reported revenue figures year by year.
The disclosure double standard
SAM runs a public campaign, “#FollowTheMoney,” pressing the cannabis industry to reveal its funders. In 2019, however, when New York law required lobbying social-welfare groups to disclose their donors, SAM’s New York chapter asked the state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics to keep its funders secret, citing potential harassment of donors. The commission denied the request on September 10, 2019. Contemporary reporting also documented taxpayer and law-enforcement-linked money connected to the SAM ecosystem that the organization publicly downplayed. The organization is entitled to make its case; the relevant, documented fact is that it demanded disclosure from its opponents while fighting it for itself.
Why it appears here
SAM is the national parent of the parent-advocacy and state-campaign infrastructure that Every Brain Matters and Citizens for a Safe and Healthy Texas operate within. Understanding the Texas campaign means understanding where it originates.
Sources
- Founding and leadership: Ballotpedia; Wikipedia; Council on Criminal Justice; SAM (learnaboutsam.org).
- Funding statements: SAM; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (IRS 990 filings).
- New York disclosure denial (2019): Times Union; Filter; Marijuana Moment.