It took Michael Correia more than a week after getting his new job to tell his parents he was a marijuana lobbyist.
“I just got a job lobbying for a small-business trade association that focuses on taxes and banking issues,” he told them four months ago, after being hired by the National Cannabis Industry Association.
He wasn’t lying, but for a guy who had been working for Republicans and conservative organizations for the better part of 16 years, telling his mom and dad about representing Big Pot wasn’t exactly high on his list. It wasn’t the first time he neglected to tell his parents about marijuana in his life. He smoked it about a dozen times as a teenager before deciding that all it did was make him hungry and tired.
“That’s news to me,” says his mother, Joanne, noting that she counseled all three of her children against the dangers of drugs. “If he ever smoked it, I don’t think we were ever aware of it. But if he did he got past it, obviously. Now he doesn’t even drink coffee.”