W<\/span>ashington, D.C., America\u2019s capital city, is also one of America\u2019s Blackest cities. But advocates for an equitable cannabis market say the same cannot be said for the racial makeup of the growing industry. New legislation could change that by mandating a certain percentage of Black-owned cannabis businesses in historically-Black areas.<\/p>\n A full 49 percent of the district\u2019s citizens are Black. This is a dramatic shift downward from the early 1970s, when Black people accounted for more than 70 percent <\/a>of D.C.\u2019s residents \u2014 and, despite or perhaps because of ongoing gentrification, the newly \u201cintegrated\u201d city is still shamefully segregated<\/a> \u2014 but D.C. is still one place in America where white people are not a statistical majority.<\/p>\n But white folk still call most of the shots where money is involved \u2014 like in business, which extends to the marijuana business, where the faces of business owners, dispensary operators, cultivators and board members of ancillary firms are, by every estimation made, overwhelmingly white.<\/p>\n In a city where cannabis use is so widespread the smell of reefer is detected at FBI headquarters<\/a>, but only one of the city\u2019s 13 current marijuana business owners is black, this is a problem \u2014 an obvious problem, and one which the free market has proven unwilling or unable to fix<\/a>.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, as legal cannabis becomes a multibillion-dollar business opportunity, non-white people still account for up to 90 percent<\/a> of the marijuana-related arrests in America.<\/p>\n D.C. city Councilman Robert C. White Jr. recently put it this way<\/a>:<\/p>\n \u201cWe have locked up so many black people for marijuana, and I see it as in\u00adcred\u00adibly hypocritical for those folks to return from prison on marijuana charges just to come back to a place that has now legalized and industrialized it, and they can\u2019t play any role.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In the very recent past, pervasive and persistent racial inequality \u2014 in schools, at the ballot box, in the workplace \u2014 has often only been solved by government mandate or a court order. At other times, fixes have been implemented only at gunpoint<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whether marijuana will need that level of enforcement to atone for past evils remains to be seen. For now, White and the D.C. City Council are requiring that minority-owned companies be given preference when considered for a permit to sell cannabis within D.C. city limits.<\/p>\n White sees this version of a Voting Rights Act for weed as an \u201cobligation.\u201d<\/p>\n Other governments around the country have tried similar tacks. No place has gone as far as Oakland, California, where half of the marijuana-related business permits<\/a> to be handed out in the near future are reserved for\u00a0communities affected most by the War on Drugs.<\/p>\n The courts may yet have to become involved for the green rush to be less white: In Maryland, where exactly zero of the first wave of medical-marijuana business license were granted to Black-owned firms, a judge in May put the state\u2019s long-gestating cannabis program on hold entirely<\/a>, pending the result of a pending lawsuit.<\/p>\n In D.C., there are eight licensed medical-marijuana cultivation centers and five dispensaries. One of the cultivators is black-owned.<\/p>\n White\u2019s legislation would give specific priority to black-run firms seeking to open a dispensary in D.C.\u2019s southeastern quadrant, on the east side of the Anacostia River, where the neighborhoods are overwhelmingly Black.<\/p>\n If it works, that would be something. It\u2019s not quite having Black-owned marijuana businesses in lily-white Georgetown, but it would be a start. Considering how far along the marijuana industry has come, it\u2019s also long overdue.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you support cannabis reparations?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis Reparations? D.C. Explores Priority for Black-Owned Businesses<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Washington D.C. legislation would give minorities preference in starting cannabis businesses. Washington, D.C., America\u2019s capital city, is also one of America\u2019s Blackest cities. But advocates for an equitable cannabis market say the same cannot be said for the racial makeup of the growing industry. New legislation could change that byContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,120,80,590,417,81,122],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17616,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17615\/revisions\/17616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Cannabis Reparations? D.C. Explores Priority for Black-Owned Businesses<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"