Marijuana Licensing Corruption SHARE Fifteen states have legalized recreational marijuana and 36 states have legalized medical marijuana. As we move toward legalization across the nation, state policymakers should be learning lessons from the reforms we’ve seen so far. One lesson is that ceding full control to local governments and allowing them to impose licensing in a discretionary and opaque manner is a recipe for corruption. The FBI issued a statement on the problem in 2019: “States require licenses to grow and sell the drug—opening the possibility for public officials to become susceptible to bribes in exchange for those licenses.” The problem is not commonplace licensing for health and safety, it is putting tight and arbitrary caps on the numbers of business licenses approved.