Yale MBAs Blue, left, and Kennedy: rehabilitating the image of privateers. No, not that kind of rehab.

OK, gang, roll out the pot jokes: a pair of Yale MBAs have fired up a new joint venture to invest in legalized marijuana.

Well, not the marijuana itself, but every manner of goods and services needed to support an industry that is newly legalized in Colorado and Washington State.

“It’s the biggest opportunity I’m ever going to see in my lifetime,” Brendan Kennedy ’05MBA tells the Seattle Times.

The Kennedys of Harvard made their money bootlegging liquor. This Kennedy, with fellow Yale School of Management graduate Michael Blue ’05MBA and a third partner, Christian Groh, has launched a private-equity firm, Privateer Holdings, that “is believed to be the first of its kind in the nation to focus exclusively on marijuana,” according to the Times.

In addition to flying the weed flag, the entrepreneurs—with backgrounds in investment banking, insurance, and technology—seem bent on rehabilitating the image of privateers, more commonly known as pirates. ”Through history privateers have expediently served the public good, summoning all ingenuity and initiative to accomplish their chartered mission and cultivate its rewards,” their website says.

Perhaps their next move in the service of the pot-smoking public good will be Twinkie conservation.