By Jonathan Kaminsky
SEATTLE
(Reuters) - In a decade with the Drug Enforcement Administration,
Patrick Moen rose to supervise a team of agents busting methamphetamine
and heroin rings in Oregon - before giving it all up to join the nascent
legal marijuana industry in nearby Washington state.
In
November, the former federal drug agent quit his post to work for a
marijuana industry investment firm, and says he relishes getting in on
the ground floor of a burgeoning industry he was once sworn to
annihilate.
As managing director of compliance and senior counsel
for Seattle-based Privateer Holdings, Moen has added his name to a small
but growing list of individuals with unlikely backgrounds who have
joined or thrown their support behind state-sanctioned marijuana
enterprises.In Oregon, another former Portland-based DEA agent, Paul Schmidt, who retired from the agency in 2010, recently set up shop as a consultant to medical cannabis businesses after working as a state inspector of medical pot dispensaries in Colorado.
Last
year, former Mexican president Vicente Fox visited Seattle to trumpet
support for a pot firm fronted by former Microsoft executive Jamen
Shively. The Seattle police department is weighing whether to allow
officers to moonlight as security guards at pot shops slated to open
later this year.
Moen, whose jump has been
criticized by his former boss at the DEA, said that even as his profile
within the agency rose, he nursed a growing sense that the marijuana
cases he worked, and the laws underpinning them, were wrongheaded.
Moen
says he is working to foster a reputable pot industry that will hasten
an end to the drug's prohibition and allow the DEA to sharpen its focus
on drugs that are truly harmful.
"I
saw this as an amazing opportunity to be a part of the team that's
helping to create this industry, " Moen, 36, told Reuters. "I don't
really feel like it's the other side."
While
marijuana remains illegal under federal law, some 20 states and
Washington, D.C., allow for its medical use. In 2012, voters in
Washington state and Colorado became the first to legalize adult
recreational use of the drug.
Colorado
and Washington state have fed the momentum for pot liberalization
efforts elsewhere, with a legalization measure likely to go before
Alaska voters in August and activists in Oregon collecting signatures to
get a similar initiative on that state's November ballot.
The U.S. Department of
Justice announced in August it wouldn't interfere with state efforts to
regulate and tax marijuana provided they're able to meet a set of
requirements that include keeping it away from children and restricting
its flow into other states.
EVOLVING VIEWS
Over
the summer, Moen arranged to meet Privateer Chief Executive Officer
Brendan Kennedy in a Portland coffee shop, where he gave Kennedy his DEA
business card before passing him an envelope. Kennedy feared it
contained a subpoena but was relieved to instead find enclosed a copy of
Moen's resume, the CEO said.
Colorado
this month allowed stores to begin selling weed, a step that is months
away in Washington state. These developments, coupled with Moen's own
evolving views, made a once unfathomable career shift a possibility, he
said.
Among his current
assignments, Moen is helping Privateer avoid legal pitfalls as it pushes
into the cultivation of medical weed in Canada - a significant leap for
a firm that has until recently invested solely in enterprises on the
fringes of the marijuana trade.
The pay and benefits of his
new job are "close to a wash" with his previous position, Moen says,
but include stock options in a company aiming to become an industry
cornerstone.
Moen's value to
Privateer likely will come in guiding the company on how to steer clear
of activities that raise red flags with federal authorities, said Hilary
Bricken, a Seattle-based marijuana business lawyer.
"It's
extremely ironic," she said. "You go from cracking skulls to supporting
the very effort that you once vowed to entirely destroy."
Seattle-based
DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew G. Barnes, the top-ranking DEA
official in the Pacific Northwest, called Moen's career change an act of
abandonment.
"It is
disappointing when law enforcement officers, sworn to uphold the laws of
the United States with honor, courage and integrity, abandon their
commitment to work in an industry involved in trafficking marijuana,"
Barnes told Reuters in a statement.
Underscoring
the divide between the DEA and an emerging pot industry sanctioned by
states, the agency's chief of operations, James Capra, on Wednesday
denounced the movement toward ending pot prohibition at a U.S. Senate
hearing as "reckless and irresponsible."
But Moen said not all his former colleagues have reacted negatively to his move.
"I've
gotten a lot of support from former colleagues," Moen said. "I wasn't
sure how guys were going to react and it's been really great."
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