Marijuana industry looks to get more women, minorities in the pot business
‘White people are getting filthy rich from it’
Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Justin Wm. Moyer.
In 2015, 142 people were arrested for public consumption of marijuana in the District of Columbia.
That same year, recreational marijuana use became legal in the city. Still, D.C. police arrest records show that arrests for public use of the drug are on the rise: More than 400 people were arrested in 2016 for public consumption of marijuana.
Yet a panel of speakers who gathered Wednesday at Howard University said entrepreneurs — particularly women and minorities — should not fear what those in the marijuana industry call “the cannabis space.”
“It’s a good business — we’re at the start, it’s brand new,” said Lisa Scott, a former chef who runs Bud Appetit, an edibles company based in D.C. “So many minorities are locked up — white people are getting filthy rich from it.”
The panel, “Minority Leaders in Cannabis,” came together through Women Grow, a national for-profit group founded in Denver in 2014 “as a catalyst for women to influence and succeed in the cannabis industry as the end of marijuana prohibition occurs on a national scale,” according to its website.
Gia Morón, Women Grow’s communications director, said it’s important for the relatively new industry to address diversity now.
“We are calling it out early,” Morón said. “We’re starting out saying, ‘You’re going to do better.’ . . . I hope in five years we’re not talking about diversity.”
Hurdles for people of color
Getting into the legalized marijuana industry can be more difficult for people of color, panelists said.
- The war on drugs disproportionately targeted minorities, and criminal histories can complicate applications for dispensary licenses.
- Communities destroyed by the crack epidemic are not always eager to welcome a pot business to the block — even though those communities could benefit economically and physically from marijuana products, advocates said.
Marijuana is still illegal at the federal level, and some are worried about the repercussions they might face if they decide to enter the industry. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has raised “serious questions” about legalization, appears less friendly to the cannabis industry than his predecessor.
“I can’t say I feel comfortable,” dispensary owner Chanda Macias said. “As the industry continues to change, less minorities participate because of their fears.”
Seeing opportunity
Cannabis investor and former New York Jets defensive lineman Marvin Washington said minorities have a historic chance to turn a bad break into a good one.
“We have the opportunity to do this right and make sure the people that suffered when cannabis was in the black market . . . have the opportunity to participate in the upswing,” he said.
Washington, a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit against the Justice Department that seeks marijuana legalization, also discounted the possibility that Sessions would somehow re-criminalize marijuana across the nation after legalization in the District and elsewhere.
“The genie is out of the bottle,” he said. “I’m not sure how you get it back in.”
