Roger Stone has responded to the boycott of the Cannabis World Congress and Business Expo by at least 30 exhibitors and speakers due to his involvement, telling LA Weekly that the protest is based on the “recycled” and “phony charge” that he is a racist and that it is organized by his enemies, namely David Brock, the founder of Media Matters for America.
“To be clear this manufactured ‘boycott’ is agitprop astro-turf, with all the usual trolls and bots featured in a heavy-handed but obvious smear campaign waged by David Brock and his minions,” Stone, who founded the United States Cannabis Coalition in June, wrote in an email to LA Weekly. “I will not be silenced in the fight for states’ right to legalize a medicinally beneficial plant that helps millions of Americans.”
Moreover, Stone said the boycott is happening “despite my longtime activism in opposition to New York’s draconian, racist Rockefeller Drug Laws dating to a speech I made at the Countdown to Justice Rally in New York City in 2003. Other speakers included Russell Simmons and Rev. Al Sharpton. My critics propose censorship.”
Jesce Horton, co-founder and chairman of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, which has led the boycott, said Stone’s “assertion that this is a smear campaign waged by his enemies is exactly the type of dismissive behavior he has displayed toward communities of color and women for years.”
“The idea that cannabis business owners and activists can’t assess for ourselves his deplorable rhetoric and his camp’s self-serving intentions in the cannabis industry is sad,” he said in the report.
CWCB Expo organizers have indicated Stone will deliver his keynote as planned despite the boycott.