No, Maureen Dowd's "paranoid" pot column in The New York Times does not signal a reversal of public sentiment on legal marijuana, Zynga Co-founder Tom Bollich told CNBC on Monday.
However, it does imply the need for more pot laws, he said.
"The fact that you can take too much too easily, and everything kind of looks like a candy bar," Bollich told "Squawk Alley," "Almost certainly what we're going to see is more regulation, and that's what's needed."
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Bollich has turned his attention from social gaming to cannabis technology as CEO of Surna, a company on a mission to manufacture disruptive technology and equipment for the legal marijuana industry, according to its website. Bollich was one of the featured speakers at a marijuana conference hosted by The ArcView Investor Network in Denver, Colorado—the Mile High City—where more than 200 high-net-worth investors eager to get in on the expanding industry listened to pitches from select entrepreneurs.
"At Surna we're really focused on tackling the really big problems," Bollich said, noting climate, power and water as major topics. "We're an engineering firm at the end of the day, so we're going to attack those first."
The legal marijuana market value in the United States is projected to grow 68 percent this year to $2.57 billion, according to research by ArcView Group. "Gains will come in the form of increased demand in existing state markets, as well as from new state markets coming online within a five-year horizon," according to the research, which values the five-year national market potential at $10.2 billion.
"This was exactly the way it was at Zynga," said Bollich. "It was an evolving industry that we get to be at the ground floor."
—CNBC's David Montalvo