Pubdate: Tue, 29 Mar 2016
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2016 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Erika D. Smith

MAIMED BY WAR ON DRUGS, BLACK PEOPLE LEFT BEHIND IN CALIFORNIA'S GREEN RUSH

Black People Are Behind, Left Out of Legal Cannabis Industry

Only 1 Percent of U.S. Dispensaries Are Owned by Blacks

Some See Sacramento Pot Tax As a Way to Help Bigger Problem

It was on Good Friday when Derrell Roberts, co-founder of the Roberts 
Family Development Center, told me how he felt about weed. 
Specifically, an initiative on the June ballot that will ask 
Sacramento voters to approve a 5 percent tax on commercial marijuana 
cultivation.

The money, as much as $5 million a year, would be set aside for 
programs for at-risk youth, including for early childhood education, 
tutoring, gang diversion and arts activities. Programs that his 
Roberts Family Development Center in Del Paso Heights always struggles to fund.

Sounds good, right? Except for the part about illegal marijuana grows 
in residential neighborhoods being magnets for violent crime.

"I just know this," Roberts said, leaning forward. "Marijuana got a 
lot of black men put in jail. And if I can use marijuana to keep 
young black men out of jail - and that's where I'm at now - then 
that's what I'm going to do."

Up until that moment, I couldn't put my finger on exactly what I 
found so intriguing about a pot tax in Sacramento and, at the same 
time, what I continue to find so troubling about other, larger 
efforts to bring the drug into the mainstream.

It's not that I'm a hater. I support legalization.

Because of this long march toward saner drug policies, few people in 
California get thrown in jail for years for smoking or possessing 
small amounts of weed anymore. The stigma of the drug is going away, 
too, as more people begin to see it for what it is: a freakin' plant. 
Even my aging mother, with her aches and pains and her tendency to 
trip and fall, now swears by the medicinal qualities of cannabis oil.

But for all of the positive steps that California and other states 
have taken, there has been unfairness, too. A recent investigation by 
Buzzfeed, which, in addition to time-sucking, mind-numbing online 
quizzes, actually produces some good journalism now and then, makes 
this point all too clear.

It found that "fewer than three dozen of the 3,200 to 3,600 
storefront marijuana dispensaries in the United States are owned by 
black people." That works out to about 1 percent.

That's a percentage so low that it should be criminal. Instead it's a 
percentage that's largely ignored by the overwhelmingly white 
politicians, lobbyists and Silicon Valley investors who are driving 
the public policy conversations about cannabis, and how and by whom 
the industry should be brought from shadows into the light.

The people hurt most by the decades-long war on drugs - poor black 
people and brown people  are being locked out, forced out, bought out 
and even fearfully opting out of an industry that is one of the 
fastest growing in the country.

California already brings in about $1 billion a year for medical 
marijuana sales. If voters approve a November ballot initiative to 
make it legal for recreational use, the added sales could more than 
double the national market for legal weed  currently estimated at $2.7 billion.

With all of that money floating around, one would think someone, 
somewhere would keep official statistics on diversity within the 
industry. But no.

To come up with 1 percent, Buzzfeed conducted more than 150 
interviews with dispensary owners, industry insiders and salespeople 
who do business with a lot of pot shops.

I haven't conducted anywhere close to that many interviews on this 
topic, but based on what I've heard and what I've seen, Buzzfeed's 
findings definitely ring true.

Just wandering around the Emerald Cup trade show back in December, 
the lack of people of color among the growers was striking. Panel 
discussions on diversity focused mainly on getting more women into 
the trade, a noble cause as well. But given that the annual festival 
is billed as "the Oscars of the cannabis industry," it should've been 
nicknamed #EmeraldCupSoWhite.

It's not that black and brown people aren't getting involved with 
legal cannabis at all.

Snoop Dogg sells it. So does former NBA All-Star Cliff Robinson, and 
Tommy Chong, of '70's and '80's stoner fame, is hawking products, 
too. But they are few and far between.

Part of the problem is policies. Many states make it tough for anyone 
with any kind of criminal record involving drugs to take part in the 
legal industry. Given that black people comprise about half of the 
more than 2 million Americans behind bars - a rate nearly six times 
the rate of whites  and many of them because of policies from the war 
on drugs, that's a problem.

In California, Proposition 47, which reduced some nonviolent drug 
felonies to misdemeanors, helps. But there are still some questions 
about people with felony records being able to participate in the 
medical market. The language in the November initiative, the Adult 
Use of Marijuana Act, is better than what other states offer, but can 
be confusing, especially when compared to the more restrictive rules 
under the current medical pot law.

Also part of the problem is that discrepancies remain in how drug 
charges are meted out, even in states that have legalized marijuana. 
Several studies show that black people are still more likely to be 
arrested for marijuana possession than white people, even though both 
races use the drug at similar rates. In Colorado, for example, blacks 
get busted for possession more than twice as often as whites do, 
despite accounting for only 4 percent of the state's population.

This has to change. And yet it's one reason why Roberts shrugs off 
the possibility of commercial marijuana growing being zoned for some 
of the seven inner-city neighborhoods where his center offers 
after-school, preschool, mentoring and counseling programs.

"They're already here," he said of the growers.

The question is how can the neighborhoods around them use what 
they're doing for the good of the broader community. The question is 
how can the city bring them out of the shadows and into the light, 
maybe with some police protection for business owners instead of 
police raids for criminals.

Even if Sacramento voters decide against a pot tax, and there are 
plenty of reasons to do so  namely that ballot box budgeting can tie 
the hands of government in a crunch  you have to admit there's some 
serendipity here. That the same drug that led to the destruction of 
so many families in so many Sacramento neighborhoods could, years 
later, save those same families and those same neighborhoods.

Really, it's only fair.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom