Big social media and tech companies are cracking down on illegal drug-related activity on their networks. Entrepreneurs seeking to take advantage of America’s legal weed boom say they’re being hurt instead.

Thirty-eight thousand people normally don't just disappear. So when 25-year-old Shane Fairbrother signed in to Instagram one evening last week and discovered that his company's account, @themedtainer, had been suspended — and his loyal tens of thousands of followers were gone — he was more than a little annoyed.

"I can understand kicking off certain people that aren't following guidelines or posting things that cast the [cannabis] industry in a bad light, but we've always been aboveboard," Fairbrother said.

Dramatic differences in laws on medical and recreational marijuana from state to state have left Silicon Valley struggling to consistently enforce rules about images and videos of weed-related activities across platforms featuring user-generated content. The companies fear they could be held legally liable for users who break the law. Federal law bars selling drug paraphernalia, but there is an exemption for "any person authorized by local, State, or Federal law to manufacture, possess, or distribute such items."

In the past few months, Instagram has deleted dozens of cannabis-related accounts. In a similar move, Apple's App Store began aggressively policing recreational marijuana content this past fall. With a flick of a switch, a digital marijuana business can lose access to its entire customer base. Not just cannabis dispensaries, hash oil extractors, and edible makers, but any individual who posts a lot about weed or business that sells marijuana-related products, like Fairbrother's Medtainer.

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The Medtainer is an odor-proof, childproof, medical-grade container with a built-in grinder. Initially intended to help grind pills for geriatric or pediatric patients, the Medtainer found its true home in the cannabis world, as many smokers prefer to grind their weed before packing a bowl or rolling a joint in order to create more burnable surface area.



Since taking over the company with his father in 2012, Fairbrother has put out limited-edition Medtainers in collaborations with Ty Dolla Sign, Redman, Slightly Stoopid, and High Times. Last year, the company went public, and the stock currently has a market cap of over $45 million. Even Snoop Dogg has been seen using one.



If you're a ganjapreneur like Fairbrother, Instagram is where you come to promote new product lines, to shout out (and tag) your friends and colleagues, to show that you're about that life, and to repost cartoons and memes that will make your stoned and scrolling audience chuckle and, hopefully, associate your growing small business with being giddy and high.

The social media storefront also confers an air of legitimacy in an otherwise shaky industry. In Instagram's never-ending stream of images, all accounts appear equal, and any black market business can become a safe-looking brand. But that fluidity goes both ways. A publicly traded company might appear, to untrained eyes, to be violating the terms of service.



When Fairbrother saw that his account had been terminated, he started filing multiple appeals a day, but Instagram never responded. Instead, he was left alone with his questions. Shouldn't there be some kind of more formal review board for shutting down accounts? Were his appeals even reaching a human being? Had competitors or haters flagged the account repeatedly until it got turned off?



And most importantly, how is it possible that one little tech company in Northern California got to decide willy-nilly whether his business is legal?

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