"The black market exists only because we decided that this form of trade should be illegal." — Scott Eden
In October 2019, tech executive Tushar Atre was abducted from his oceanfront home in Santa Cruz and found murdered on his own property in the redwoods — shot execution-style, hands bound. He had spent barely three years in the cannabis business. Scott Eden's new book traces how a charismatic Silicon Valley entrepreneur, seeking to "disrupt" the newly legal weed industry, found himself entangled with an array of colorful and dangerous characters — hippie do-gooders, black-market operators, and stone-cold killers. We discuss the permeable divide between legal and illegal cannabis, why the industry has been an economic disaster for most founders, and whether America's half-pregnant approach to legalization created the conditions for Tushar's death. A California story about ambition, love, and the darker edges of the American dream.
About the Guest
Scott Eden is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work has appeared in ESPN The Magazine, GQ, Wired, Inc., and The Atavist. His story "The Prosecution of Thabo Sefolosha" won a 2017 New York Press Club Award and a National Association of Black Journalists award for investigative reporting. He is the author of Touchdown Jesus (Simon & Schuster, 2005) and the new A Killing in Cannabis.
Chapters:
00:13 America's war on drugs
02:03 The victim: Tushar Atre
05:27 Prop 64 and the gold rush
08:15 The counterculture connection
11:13 The permeable divide
14:43 Tech bros living on the edge
17:10 Steve Jobs, Burning Man, and weed money
18:07 The murder
20:06 Rachael Lynch
22:39 Economic collapse
25:31 Half-pregnant prohibition
31:45 The paranoia problem
References:
People discussed:
Tushar Atre — tech executive and cannabis entrepreneur; murdered October 1, 2019
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tushar_Atre