Every stoner’s fantasy of a weed themed island paradise is now in the works — thanks to a group of visionaries behind Ganjaland.
“We want to buy and island and create a place where you can invest, and through the evolution of Ganjaland, your investment will grow,” Jesse Ferrell, the brain behind the project, tells Jane Street. The idea is to build a resort on a private island, where weed is de facto legal, and bring together cannabis industry leaders from around the world, he says.
Ferrell and nearly 40 partners are currently looking at three islands they’d consider for purchase, including Pilotin, a private island up for sale in the South Pacific, within the country of Vanuatu.
For an entire island, Pilotin’s $2 million price tag is pretty cheap, according to Ferrell. The expensive part is transporting all the materials to the island in order to build a resort. “Our goal for the island is to build it up on our own, financing it through tourism, a reality TV show, and advertising,” says Ferrell. “All the money the island makes will be used to reinvest into building it up.”
The group began with a Kickstarter campaign that launched on March 10. Within less than two weeks, however, it’s been suspended. “We offered a $20 ticket to win a share {of the island}, and I think that was the reason it got suspended,” says Ferrell. Kickstarter prohibits campaigners from offering financial services or rewards that they didn’t make, themselves.
Ferrell says he nonetheless has a solution to this roadblock. The group launched a website and has a new plan for fundraising: accepting pledges from people to invest in shares of the enterprise, or in the island property, itself. Only once enough people pledge so that the group can theoretically afford its expenses will they begin taking money.
The shares will go for $3750 each, while one square meter of the island will cost $3.75. Ferrell is hoping to get 1,000 people together to each buy a share. With $3.75 million, they’d be able not only to buy the island, but also have money left over to start building the infrastructure.
Legally, Ferrell says the idea is feasible. He estimates that about 80 percent percent of Vanuatu locals smoke cannabis and grow it. Weed isn’t outright legal there, but Ferrell says because their prison system is so small, it’d be literally impossible to arrest or enforce marijuana laws that would otherwise prohibit the hundreds of expected tourists from toking up.
Ferrell himself has been in the cannabis industry for the past 20 years. He began as a “gangaster,” as he says some call it, smuggling hash from Spain or Morocco back home to Germany. After getting caught, he made his way to South America and eventually to the legal industry in California, where he currently grows and extracts cannabis. “I have dedicated and worked my entire life with cannabis,” says Ferrell. “Spreading awareness and information is vital in overcoming reefer madness. Unfortunately many members of society still believe cannabis is a bad thing, but our mission is to show them wrong.”
