For years, liberty-loving Americans have been fighting for cannabis legalization in our country. For almost exclusively financial reasons, the United States government has continuously tried to prevent such from happening.

Now that the tides seem to be turning on the legalization issue, many successful corporations have slowly been transitioning into the cannabis industry. In a not-so-surprising turn, the latest seems to be tech giant Microsoft.

The company announced recently that they would be partnering with Kind Financial — a software company with an emphasis on cannabis. The Independent reports, “The company provides ‘seed to sale’ services for cannabis growers, allowing them to track inventory, navigate laws and handle transactions all through Kind’s software systems. The partnership marks the first major tech company to attach its name to the burgeoning industry of legal marijuana.”

This is excellent news for a number of reasons. If a mainstream, popular, innovative company like Microsoft gets involved in the industry, it could potentially open doors for other businesses to do the same. If more and more companies join the cannabis train, the federal government will be forced to acknowledge just how much money there is to be made from a product of its nature. After that, it’s only a matter of time before the legalization occurs.

As shady as the government can be — especially when it comes to financials — the cannabis industry is so strong that it seems destined to eventually force the feds to end their unjust discrimination and decriminalize it. After all, it’s just a plant.

The Independent article reports that Allen St. Pierre — executive director of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) — stated, “Ten years ago, 20 years ago, if you were saying, I have a software and I’m hoping to track marijuana sale, you and I would be in a RICO conspiracy. So that speaks to how much has changed, and how today what’s heralded in a newswire as a big partnership, years ago would have put you in federal prison.”

There’s a change coming, and here’s hoping that Microsoft is only the beginning. If that’s the case, we may be closer to widespread, country-wide cannabis legalization than we even expected.

Sources:

The Independent

The New York Times