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Amazon’s push to legalize kush

Good morning! This Wednesday, why Amazon is pushing to legalize weed, the Oversight Board wants a word with Facebook, and Snoop Dogg's secret Twitter account might not be what you expect.
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Amazon announced yesterday that it will be endorsing two separate bills in Congress that aim to not only decriminalize pot-smoking nationwide, but also expunge and reduce the criminal records and sentences of people who have been incarcerated for it.
It might not be immediately clear why Amazon has skin in this game. But the biggest political fights these days — even ones about recreational drug use — all seem to eventually involve tech companies. And in this case, the varying state rules and regulations have actually made business decisions difficult for Big Tech.
Amazon is the country's second-largest private employer. If you believe a recent Gallup poll that found that 12% of U.S. adults smoke weed, and assume that number also applies to Amazon employees too, 100,000 of the company's workers are technically breaking federal laws all the time.
The company is desperate to fill more than 100,000 new jobs and is reportedly battling unusually high turnover rates for its current employees, creating a trade-off scenario: Limit applicants because of difficult weed laws (let's call this Option A), or potentially anger some state and government drug officials while beginning to address the hiring problem (Option B). Amazon chose Option B.
This is also about more than workers and hiring. One of the country's biggest ecommerce suppliers still can't participate in, and therefore profit off of, the growing cannabis industry. Google is facing similar problems here: The company doesn't allow advertising for any illegal drugs, including cannabis, and you can't download any apps that sell weed in the Play Store. Apple just recently lifted its ban on weed-related apps, though there are some restrictions.
Federal legalization would make all of these complex and increasingly large problems basically disappear for everyone. Maybe don't let your kids read today's newsletter (hi, Dad!), but the lesson here? A whole lot of people do drugs, and tech companies want in on the money.
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So there's this Twitter account, @CozomoMedici, that tweets about NFTs. It's just shy of a month old, but it already has thousands of followers. And on Monday, none other than Snoop Dogg revealed that he's the person running the account. (Are we 100% sure this is the truth? No. But @CozomoMedici is rolling with the idea, and it's a fun theory, so we're going with it.)
Tons of celebrities have their own NFTs, including Simone Biles and Paris Hilton, but Snoop Dogg is actually dropping a ton of money in the space. And, as you might expect, a lot of those NFTs are weed-related, which seems to be the theme of today's newsletter.
Thousands of U.S. businesses sold more than $50 billion worth of their products to Chinese consumers with Alibaba last year. Alibaba provides the tools and infrastructure that U.S. businesses need to build their brands in China and reach local consumers.
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