Marijuanna CEO

Former U.S. Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) is the new CEO of a marijuana company that produces cannabis-infused products for both recreational and medical use, the company announced Tuesday.

The Alaskan Democrat and 2008 presidential contender will lead KUSH, a subsidiary owned by Cannabis Sativa, Inc. Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson serves as CEO of Cannabis Sativa, and Gravel is on that company's board of directors.

A year into the nation's experiment with legal, taxed marijuana sales, Washington and Colorado find themselves wrestling not with the federal interference many feared, but with competition from medical marijuana or even outright black market sales.

In Washington, the black market has exploded since voters legalized marijuana in 2012, with scores of legally dubious medical dispensaries opening and some pot delivery services brazenly advertising that they sell outside the legal system.

Licensed shops say taxes are so onerous that they can't compete.


KUSH will develop and market new marijuana-infused products under Gravel's leadership, the company said in a press release.

Gravel served two terms in the Senate from 1969 to 1981, and was a candidate in the 2008 presidential race. He also has been an outspoken supporter of marijuana legalization and a staunch critic of the decades-long war on drugs.

"I feel very deeply about the failure that is marijuana prohibition," Gravel told The Huffington Post as one of the reasons why he took his new job. "Nixon is the one that put marijuana into a Schedule I. People forget that story, I lived through that. I thought it was horrible."

President Richard Nixon, who is credited as the first president to declare a "war on drugs," signed the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, classifying marijuana as a Schedule I substance.

Though 23 states have declared medical cannabis is legal and four have approved recreational marijuana for adults, the regulation and sale of the drug remains illegal under the CSA.

The states that have legalized marijuana or softened penalties for possession have only been able to do so because of federal guidance urging federal prosecutors to refrain from targeting state-legal marijuana operations.