After the signing ceremony, Tom and Richmond ducked away from the reporters at the White House and caught a cab back to their hotel. News of the legislation’s swift passage already dominated the tiny TV screen in the back of the cab. SO-CALLED HEALTHY SMOKING INTITIATIVE LEGALIZES POT AND BANS TOBACCO read the crawl. FDA EXPECTED TO OUTLAW CIGARETTES UNDER NEW AUTHORITY FROM CONGRESS … TOBACCO GIANT SUMNER ANNOUNCES NEW ‘AMERICAN HEMP’ CLOTHING BRAND. Two newscasters, barely able to contain their mirth, sat in front of a giant digital image of a marijuana leaf hovering above the White House.
"Jesus Christ," said Tom, fumbling around with the controls to turn off the sound. "We've got to make sure we stay ahead of this story."
Richmond shrugged. "It's not so bad," he said. "We were lucky to get a Friday afternoon signing. The media shitstorm will have died down by Monday morning. Then we just go back to running our business. Doing what we do."
"I don't know how you can be so calm about this," Tom said. "That trip to California must have been good for you."
In fact, Richmond did miss Humboldt County. He felt strangely at home there, as if he had caught up with some alternate version of his life that had been ticking by in northern California all this time. In this other life, he would have asked out the girl in the bookstore. He would have bought a house in the mountains and hired Don Cantrell to build a deck around it. The money for this alternative version of reality would have come from some unidentified source: nobody in Humboldt County seemed to have an actual job, but they all got by somehow. If you asked a person in Eureka what they did for a living, they would just shrug and say, "A little of this, a little of that." Richmond could get used to that kind of lifestyle.
And it had been a profitable trip, not just because of the plants he managed to ship back alive. The idea to launch a line of hemp products ahead of their more lucrative crop had come from his visits to all the little stores in Old Town that sold hemp sweaters, backpacks, and notebooks. They could get a line of clothing out to the college market to start building their brand, and then roll out the chain of brewpubs, which they were calling American Grown, once the kids had bought into the idea.
The American Grown name had been inspired by Humboldt County, too: as a nod to its pro-local farmer attitude, the brewpubs would be positioned as a celebration of American farmers, with the source of every ingredient printed on the menus, down to the name of the farmer who grew the hops for the beer and the name of the woman who jarred the pickles. The cannabis would just be marketed as one more American-grown crop. The retail smoking products would come last, after they were sure they had built enough acceptance among consumers to expect people to simply drop into a convenience store and ask for a pack of American Green.
Their competitors, of course, were livid. Sumner had managed to get the legislation ready for passage quietly, and made a backdoor deal with the White House to arrange an immediate signing ceremony. The other tobacco companies didn't even have time to call their lobbyists. It was considered a sacrilege to go it alone like this. Usually Big Tobacco stuck together. But the real outrage would come a couple of days from now, when they found out that Sumner had patented every commercially available strain of cannabis, and was in a position to challenge patents on any other strains their competitors might dig up.
"Oh, and speaking of California," Tom said as they pulled up in front of their hotel. "Have you called your new real estate partner out there?"
"Now she's my real estate partner," Richmond said, smiling.
"You're in charge, buddy," Tom said, grabbing his briefcase and handing a twenty to the driver. “You wanted to run the brewpub program, it’s yours. Just make sure your little friend in Humboldt County is ready to break ground.”
“Why wouldn’t she be?” Richmond asked.
Tom laughed. “Sooner or later those people are going to figure out what this means. Not just to the growers, but to the whole economy out there. She’s not going to be your best friend forever, Rich.”