35: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE CANNABIS INDUSTRY
The movement for decriminalizing and legalizing cannabis has gained considerable traction over the past few years in the United States. More than 36 states have enacted medical cannabis laws, and 15 now permit the adult-use of cannabis for those over 21. In 2019 the global legal cannabis industry was valued at $17.5 billion, with a 67% increase in sales in 2020 alone. While these strides are encouraging, it also raises the question of who is pocketing the profits from an industry that has caused prejudicial devastation to Black & brown communities across the nation.
America’s relationship with cannabis began quite amicably, in fact hemp was a key crop for the survival of our early economy. Hemp was used for the production of sails, rope, and clothing and later in medicines and remedies. In 1619 the Virginia Assembly passed legislation requiring every farmer to grow hemp, and again later during World War II the U.S. Department of Agriculture created an incentive program for hemp farming to produce military paraphernalia. It wasn’t until after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, when Mexican immigrants flooded the United States and shared the recreational use of cannabis, that we began to see a backlash against the crop. Racist and xenophobic anti-drug campaigners began the “Marijuana Menace” and “Reefer Madness” to associate violent and criminal activities with the drug and its Mexican users out of fear of loosing jobs during the Great Depression. Accounts confirm that the term “marijuana” was coined and popularized as a way to underscore the connection to Mexican immigrants, personified as, “inferior races and social deviants”.
Through the inflammatory leadership of Henry Ainslinger, the father of drug policy in the U.S., and consequent policies by the Nixon, Reagan, and Bush administrations, cannabis became classified as a Schedule I Drug with steep mandatory minimums that targeted Black and brown communities. The War on Drugs had devastating and far-reaching impacts. Cannabis became a tool in an all too familiar history to incarcerate Black and brown communities and keep them disenfranchised and impoverished.
As the United States moves more seriously into the decriminalization of cannabis, giving rise to a major new industry, there remains the fundamental injustices inflicted upon those who have suffered criminal convictions and the consequences of those convictions. While some state governments, such as California, have “equity programs'' to support marijuana entrepreneurs who were either imprisoned up for cannabis-related offenses or who come from neighborhoods considered disproportionately affected by the war on drugs, they operate as a lottery only benefiting select individuals. However, large corporations continue to dominate the industry as the business climate for cannabis companies has proven immensely difficult for various reasons, including high taxes, rapidly changing regulations and a robust illicit market. Other advocacy organizations across the country, such as Last Prisoner Project, MCBA, and Supernova Women have erected intervention and professional development programs, working from a belief that, “if anyone is able to profit and build wealth in the legal cannabis industry, those individuals must also work to release and rebuild the lives of those who have suffered from cannabis criminalization”.
As communities work to rectify the trauma inflicted by the criminalization of cannabis, industry experts look to the industries of Canada, Israel and China to learn how to hold our government and big business accountable to those most disproportionately affected. With a new administration, growing programming in the advocacy space, and continued legalization, there is immense hope for the revitalization of cannabis into a profit-sharing industry that can give back to the very communities it has taken away from.
