I've been doing some research for a presentation I'm going to do. The proposition would be that a Big Tobacco company (Altria - Phillip Morris) transition into growing and distributing marijuana.
My research has led to a lot of skepticism mainly around legality, but also that big tobacco companies are selling a completely different product and prefer to not get more scrutiny and regulations over marijuana.
However, my plan only needs to be viable. I am curious about the legality of Altria from getting into this.
Would Altria be able to incorporate a completely new company/open a subsidiary that would operate marijuana growing operations in states that have legalized some form of marijuana? I know that controlling interest in a firm rolls up to the balance sheet of Altria so just wanted to know this wouldn't be an issue.
We are looking to target one state that could produce and allow us to legally distribute to all other legalized states (NW Region for Washington, Oregon, California, etc).
The industry right now is running into commerce issues because banks are federally regulated, credit/debit/bank cards can't by used, so they only operate in cash.