Joe Crowley Joins Cannabis Board After Primary Loss to Ocasio-Cortez

(Bloomberg) -- Northern Swan Holdings Inc., an investment firm betting on hemp and marijuana cultivation in Colombia, has enlisted a pair of former Democratic lawmakers as it tries to navigate complicated cannabis regulations around globe.

Joe Crowley, a former high-ranking New York congressman who lost a primary to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez last year, and Tom Daschle, a former U.S. Senate majority leader from South Dakota, have joined Northern Swan’s advisory board, the latest politicians to jump into the legal cannabis industry.

The pair will help guide Northern Swan as it ramps up production in Colombia and tries to win regulatory approval to export medical marijuana and CBD into Europe, Canada and possibly the U.S., according to Chief Executive Officer Kyle Detwiler, who worked at both Blackstone Group LP and KKR & Co. before co-founding Northern Swan.

“Because we view smart cannabis investing as smart regulatory investing, I think it was important to bring to bear some seasoned experts around Washington to help us expand our business,” Detwiler, 36, said in an interview.

The U.S. and Canada are the two largest legal cannabis markets in the world, but investors have started to turn their attention to parts of Latin America, where rules surrounding marijuana are also easing.

In Colombia, medical marijuana is legal and companies are allowed to export cannabis oil. Northern Swan, based in New York, has raised almost $100 million in funding and wants to go public late this year or early in 2020, according to Detwiler. The company, which has about 900,000 square feet of cultivation capacity, is trying to get regulatory approval to start selling medical marijuana in Germany this year.

Northern Swan is the not the first cannabis company to leverage lawmakers to bring credibility to a startup. Republican John Boehner made headlines last year when he joined the advisory board of Acreage Holdings Inc. prior to the company going public in Canada.

Northern Swan set up shop in Colombia because of its agricultural infrastructure and its climate and proximity to the equator, which make it an ideal place to grow cannabis cheaply, Detwiler said. The company can produce a gram of weed for about 20 cents, significantly less than the cost in Canada, he said.

“Canadian companies have to defend building greenhouses in the tundra,” he said. “From an investment standpoint, that’s indigestible.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Craig Giammona in New York at cgiammona@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Anne Riley Moffat at ariley17@bloomberg.net, Lisa Wolfson, Jonathan Roeder

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