If states can import legal marijuana, it makes allowing recreational cannabis sales easier, as they would not have to establish rules for growing. It can also help states like Illinois and Michigan, where marijuana was recently legalized but supply shortages have hampered sales.

“We can literally move millions of people in those states out of illicit markets years sooner, and get the industry actually up and running in a real way within a year if we could move product from state to state,” Smith said.

“If we don’t do that, and (we) end up with 25 or so state-siloed productions, the minute federal prohibition actually ends, you will no longer be able to discriminate against the products of other states. You can’t keep California oranges out of Florida.

“So when federal prohibition ends, all this West Coast cannabis is going to come into these markets, and if we’ve invested billions of dollars in the Midwest and East Coast on production capacity, virtually none of that is going to be competitive with what’s going to come in from the West Coast.”

For instance, demand is dwarfed by supply in Oregon, where the 2018 harvest netted about 2.3 million pounds of pot.