Kyle Kazan is a former Los Angeles Police Department officer who once had to arrest a man he pulled up next to at a red light who had a marijuana plant sticking out of his convertible with the top down.
“We stopped at the red light, and he had a giant plant in the back seat of his car,” Kazan told Fox News Digital. “And then, when I looked at him, people are laughing. I mean it was so ridiculous. And then he saluted me.”
Now Kazan’s one of the biggest legal pot growers in the country, the co-founder and CEO of Glass House Brands, which he says produces more than 600,000 pounds of weed a year and expects to break the million mark soon.
The company owns 6 million square feet of greenhouse space, he said, but is using less than half of that.
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Glass House Brands co-founder and CEO Kyle Kazan speaks via Zoom about the fairness of his sprawling legal marijuana business with thousands of nonviolent pot deals behind bars around the U.S. (Fox News Digital)
After breaking into the legal pot business with some shady partners, including an associate of the infamous LA mogul Suge Knight, Kazan said he cleaned things up, attracted legitimate investors and cultivated a California powerhouse.
But there’s a darker side of the legalized pot business, says the man who has delivered public speeches while wearing a shirt declaring, “No one should be in prison for a plant.”
Thousands of people are serving felony prison sentences for nonviolent marijuana dealing that pale in comparison to the scale of his operation.
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Thriving marijuana plants pack the Glass House greenhouse in southern California. (Glass House Brands)
“Justice, then, certainly isn’t blind now, is it?” Kazan said.
According to Kazan’s estimate, there are between 2,700 and 3,000 people imprisoned on marijuana distribution charges in federal prisons. There are thousands more in state prisons. The Last Prisoner Project, a Colorado-based nonprofit, estimates that in 2018 there were 32,000 inmates around the country on cannabis-related charges.
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That’s just wrong, Kazan argued, especially when none of those people moved anywhere near as much weight as his company.
An exterior photo of a row of Glass House Brands greenhouses in southern California. CEO Kyle Kazan says the company owns 6 million square feet of greenhouse space for its legal marijuana farming. (Glass House Brands)
He takes the issue seriously and has even flown across the country to speak on behalf of nonviolent marijuana dealers facing decades in prison.
“I flew down to the federal courthouse in Augusta, (Georgia), at the request of a guy named Jose Valero Jr. in 2022, because he reached out to me on social media and said, ‘I’m taking a plea. I’m going to get sentenced,'” Kazan told Fox News Digital.
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Valero was facing three charges related to eight pounds of pot, Kazan said. That’s about as much as he might sweep off the floor in one of his greenhouses and throw out on a given day, he said.
“That’s what I point out, like the judge, the defendant, everybody could own – legally – my stock with a Charles Schwab account, right now, from the courthouse,” he said. “And you’re sentencing this young man?”
Weldon Angelos, Bella Thorne, Kyle Kazan and Supa Peach pose before participating in a panel during the 2022 SXSW Conference and Festivals at Austin Convention Center March 19, 2022, in Austin, Texas. (Gary Miller/Getty Images for Glass House Brands)
He is calling for clemency for nonviolent dealers as well as reasonable regulations for the marijuana industry. And he has slammed politicians in both parties, especially President Biden, over the number of pot dealers still incarcerated today.
“Mr. Biden, unfortunately, has not wavered in his commitment to keeping people in prison, unless you’re a famous WNBA player sitting in Mr. Putin’s prison. And I’m happy she’s home, and I’m happy that he went to bat for her,” he said, wagging a pen in front of a camera.
“But you don’t have to trade away a merchant of death when you have this, and you just need 3,000 signatures to end it.”
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He said marijuana users should be treated like alcohol users — allowed to partake legally but limited to reasonable, safe behavior.
“San Francisco and the craziness in our state has made a mockery of my argument because they’re saying, ‘Oh, you just want people splayed out in the streets, and you want needles in parks where kids play,” he said. “No, I don’t. I also don’t want people out there running around with a beer, drinking in public. There needs to be some laws around this, but you can do this in a sane, rational way.”
Glass House Brands CEO Kyle Kazan says the legal marijuana grower produces more than 600,000 pounds of pot a year, far more than any dealer sitting in prison. (Glass House Brands)
Kazan also weighed in on a recent high-profile case involving a woman who fell into a “marijuana-induced psychosis” after smoking a high-potency strain of boutique pot, then fatally stabbed her boyfriend and plunged the knife into her own neck multiple times before police arrived.
He compared the high THC content she consumed to Jack Daniel’s whiskey having more alcohol than a beer.
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“It’s a lot less potent, but when you drink enough of it, you’re going to get to the same place,” he said.
He said he disagreed with the outcome of her trial, in which she was acquitted.
“It needs to be some personal responsibility,” he said. “When I read that story, I shook my head. If you make a choice to obliterate yourself with alcohol or whatever, I think you should still bear the consequences of your actions.”
