Mediaboss Marketing

David BienenstockApril 14, 2020

'Tiger King' Joe Exotic's 2018 run for Oklahoma governor included a call for full cannabis legalization. (Photo: Netflix)

Right now Americans are obsessed with exactly two things, and one of them is Tiger King, Netflixs hit seven-part documentary series.

Even if you havent watched an episode, youve probably seen this dramatic, borderline surreal true crime story trending online or caught wind of a meme or two featuring Joe Exoticthe titular Tiger Kingwhose flamboyant personal style and real-life exploits are so completely wild they beggar belief.

But whether youre totally obsessed with this tale of big cats and murder plots or just trying to catch up with the zeitgeist, theres one aspect of this story thats been surprisingly flying under the radar: Joe Exotic is a huge cannabis advocate.

Aside from exploring Joe Exotics loud and proud weed legalization activism, Ill strive to not give away too many of the twists and turns that make his story so compelling (not to mention problematic).

But I do need to establish the broad outlines of Mr. Exotics life journey in order to understand where hes coming from and how he ended up as a legalization advocate in Oklahoma. So if you like to go in fresh,better bookmark this page now and come back after youve watched the show.

Otherwise, heres what you need to know.

Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage (a.k.a. Joe Exotic) was already a larger-than-life figure before Tiger King came out. But unless you stumbled across his videos on the internet, or had an abiding interest in the world of exotic animals, you probably never heard of him before.

He is very much a man of contradictionsa one-time 19-year-old small town police chief turned multiple felon, a gun-loving polyamorous polygamous gay man, a politician who hates politicians, and an animal lover convicted on seventeen federal counts of animal abuse.

Joe Exotic has run for political office twice in his life. Both times he made cannabis legalization a key rallying point in his outsider campaigns for higher office.

In his first try, Exotic ran for president of the United States in 2016. He only made the ballot in Colorado, however, and only earned 962 votes nationwide, if you include the write-ins.

Two years later he lowered his ambitions by running in the Libertarian Party primary for governor of Oklahoma. In that contest he actually got 18.7% of the vote, good enough for a respectable third-place finish.

The key to his popularity, such as it was, was a series of in-your-face campaign videos. In a time when the conventions of electoral politics have been upended, the Joe Exotic for Governor media team still found ways to break new ground.

For example, he handed out official campaign rolling papers:

He also opened his first official campaign video (of 330 videos Im going to be putting up) by directly addressing legalization in his own unique way:

Lets just start out by saying that through my years, Ive tried some drugs. During one of the debates that we had, I asked one of my opponents, Have you ever smoked weed before? And he said, Yeah, but Id be ashamed to say it.

How can you represent 300 million people and be ashamed of anything and still understand what all those people are going through?

I aint ashamed of anything.

Candidate Exotic outlined his reasons for supporting cannabis legalization more substantially at an official Libertarian Party candidate rally held at the Oklahoma State Capitol in 2017.

In this particular speech and throughout his campaign, Exotic pointed to the potential revenue from taxing and regulating cannabisplus the cost savings of ending enforcement and incarcerationas the ideal way to help fund Oklahomas public schools, which at the time were facing teacher walk-outs for lack of resources.

He then briefly hit on the hot-button issue of abolishing fishing licenses before returning to his cannabis legalization plan.

Another angle Exotic took when advocating for cannabis was to position legalization as a way to alleviate the states ongoing problems with rampant abuse of drugs like opioids and methamphetamine.

The War on Meth is not successful. Not in Oklahoma, Exotic said. I personally know I dont know how many dealers and how many users. Were spending so much time on the users that were not effective at all.

His most outside-the-box cannabis planselling consumers cannabis seized by the policehas yet to be implemented, in Oklahoma or anywhere else. And its hard to imagine that it ever will be:

I want to set up a dispensary in every county for nothing but confiscated weed. And every dime of that stays in that county to help those schools, those fire departments, those police departments and to fix those roads.

Once one of the most restrictive states when it came to cannabis laws, Oklahoma voters did pass a medical cannabis law in June of 2018a few months before the state elected a new Governor but long after Joe Exotic had dropped out of the race.

To the surprise of many inside and outside of the state, Oklahomas largely libertarian approach to regulating medical cannabis quickly led to the opening of hundreds of dispensaries and the birth of a thriving local industry.

The law also allows approved patients to grow their own cannabis at home. And Oklahoma now has some of this highest personal possession allowances in the entire country.

According to NORML:

Those possessing a state-issued license may possess the following: up to eight ounces of marijuana in their residence; up to one ounce of concentrated marijuana; up to 72 ounces of edible marijuana; up to six mature marijuana plants; up to six seedling plants; and up to three ounces of marijuana on their person. Those who do not possess a license face a fine-only misdemeanor for the possession of up to 1.5 ounces of herbal cannabis.

So although Joe Exotics second political campaign fell short at the ballot box, one of his signature issues moved forward in a big way.

Lets be clear: Most of the credit for that goes to the states longtime cannabis advocates, who ran a successful voter initiative in one of the most conservative jurisdictions in the country.

But the Tiger King played a small part in raising awareness and speaking to a group of voters outside the two-party system.

Veteran cannabis journalist David Bienenstock is the author of "How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High" (2016 - Penguin/Random House), and the co-host and co-creator of the podcast "Great Moments in Weed History with Abdullah and Bean." Follow him on Twitter @pot_handbook.

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Yes, the Tiger King really did run for governor on a 'legalize weed' platform - Leafly