More localities in California are putting in place \u201cequity license\u201d programs for cannabis dispensaries, prioritizing applicants from those communities that had been most gravely affected by cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs. Such programs are now officially encouraged under state law.<\/p>\n
But the continuing conflict over the equity program in Los Angeles casts a harsh light on the challenges of implementation and the social stakes involved.<\/p>\n
Last month, prospective cannabis entrepreneurs agreed to drop a lawsuit challenging LA\u2019s contentious process for granting licenses, after the city government agreed to increase the number of applicants. The suit was brought by the Social Equity Owners & Workers Association (SEOWA<\/a>), who argued that, even with equity measures officially in place, the process was designed in a way that still effectively excluded the prohibition-impacted communities.<\/p>\n As the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/a>\u00a0reports, principally at issue was the first-come-first-serve aspect of the application process. SEOWA asserted that more than 200 applicants who accessed the online platform before 10 a.m. \u2014 the official opening time\u2014got an unfair advantage. Mere seconds could make the difference between getting a license or not. Those with the time and resources could essentially game the system, filling out the application beforehand and hitting \u201csubmit\u201d at the precise stroke of 10.<\/p>\n SEOWA, which called on the city to halt new licenses while the suit was pending, contended that \u201cit is fundamental to any fair race that the competitors must start at the same time or, at the very least, be given accurate information about when the race will begin.\u201d<\/p>\n Under the settlement agreement reached July 8, the city agreed to changes in the program, including a prompt review of the next 100 applications that were in line. This could double the number of licenses granted to the current round of applicants. Those changes were voted up by the City Council and received the approval of Mayor Eric Garcetti.\u00a0<\/p>\n SEOWA co-founder\u00a0Kika Keith, called the settlement \u201ca great victory for us.\u201d In her statement, she also said, \u201cSocial equity applicants banded together and raised the money for legal fees to fight the injustice of the application process.\u201d<\/p>\n Keith is one of the next 100 applicants in line. But, as the LA Times notes,\u00a0hundreds more will still be left waiting. Which is why another SEOWA co-founder, Madison Shockley III, characterized the settlement as a compromise. \u201cWe made the decision to settle because we don\u2019t see any way to make what happened fair\u2014it\u2019s kind of too late for that,\u201d Shockley said. \u201cSo we felt it was for the greater good to accept the settlement that included 200 licenses.\u201d<\/p>\n The new rules approved by the City Council will also narrow the criteria for applicants who qualify for the equity program, limiting it to those with a cannabis arrest record in the state of California. The new rules also reconfigure the method for identifying areas with disproportionate arrests for cannabis offenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n Lynne Lyman, who led the\u00a0Drug Policy Action<\/a>\u00a0campaign for legalization in California, welcomed the changes. According to the\u00a0LA Times<\/a>, she commented on the changes at a city meeting where she said, \u201cWe all know social equity has been a failure, here in LA and across most jurisdictions. Too many loopholes\u2026 This is the first real hope for social equity to succeed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cWe agree that this process needs improvement,\u201d admitted Cat Packer, head of the city\u00a0Department of Cannabis Regulation<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But plans to replace the first-come-first-serve system with a lottery are raising questions about whether this will really be any more equal. The\u00a0California Minority Alliance<\/a>, which also advocates for greater representation by Black and Latino business operators in the cannabis industry, warned that exclusive reliance on a lottery emphasized chance to the exclusion of merit.\u00a0 Los Angeles announced its\u00a0Social Equity Program<\/a>\u00a0a year ago, with its stated aim to \u201cdecrease disparities in life outcomes for marginalized communities and to address the disproportionate impacts of the War on Drugs.\u201d A California state law\u00a0passed the previous year<\/a>, the Cannabis Equity Act, created incentives for such programs.<\/p>\n But those disproportionate impacts persist in LA. Cannabis arrests continue to disproportionately target Blacks (as in New York City<\/a>, even after a new policy de-emphasizing pot enforcement). In LA, arrest figures for Blacks have actually increased in\u00a0absolute<\/em>\u00a0terms since cannabis legalization \u2013 certainly a perverse irony. An urban affairs website\u00a0Crosstown<\/a>\u00a0cites the official figures, and they are staggering. In 2017, when adult-use cannabis was still illegal in California, the Los Angeles Police Department arrested 173 Black people for cannabis-related offenses. The next year, after legalization took effect, the LAPD arrested 239 Black people for cannabis offenses. In 2019, the number leapt again, to 261.\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2016, Blacks accounted for 32.2% of cannabis arrests in the city. Last year, that share rose to 42.3%, LAPD data indicates. Black folk make up 8.9% of the city\u2019s population.\u00a0<\/p>\n And by Crosstown\u2019s analysis, this is due to Blacks basically being forced into the illicit market by the continuing death of dispensaries in their neighborhoods: \u201cWealthier and predominantly white areas, such as Studio City, North Hollywood, Fairfax and Westwood are home to dozens of dispensaries. Meanwhile, the entire south part of Los Angeles, including areas with larger Black populations, such as Hyde Park and Watts, has fewer than 10 dispensaries registered with the city.\u201d<\/p>\n The neighboring city of Long Beach is grappling with similar dilemmas. According to a recent report in\u00a0Long Beach Business Journal<\/a>,\u00a0since the inception of the city\u2019s Cannabis Equity Program two years ago, just one of 50 qualifying applicants has entered the industry as a business owner.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some frustrated aspiring entrepreneurs are protesting that the program has done little more than help with paperwork. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t really anything more than showing us how to apply,\u201d said Brian Delahoussaye, 35, who has several years of experience in the cannabis trade. \u201cI\u2019m sure that\u2019s great if you have funds to apply.\u201d<\/p>\n Establishing a cannabis enterprise can cost upward of $1 million for construction, rent, building modifications and equipment. This results in a kind of Catch-22 for equity applicants.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a strange crux because you\u2019re not supposed to have any money to be in the program, but you need money to make it work,\u201d said Delahoussaye, referring to the income and asset limitations set forth as qualification requirements.\u00a0<\/p>\n This contradiction was addressed in an open letter to Mayor Robert Garcia and the Long Beach City Council sent in February by acting City Manager Tom Modica. According to Modica\u2019s letter, the equity program was set up to make \u201clegal cannabis business ownership and employment opportunities more accessible to low-income individuals and communities negatively impacted by the prior criminalization of cannabis.\u201d Yet, \u201cin speaking with prospective applicants, the primary reason for the discrepancy between interest in the program and actual business license applications received, is the substantial amount of capital necessary to start a cannabis business.\u201d<\/p>\n Delahoussaye told the Business Journal that by working in the medical marijuana industry before full adult-use legalization, he had been able to pay for his bachelor\u2019s and master\u2019s degrees. But with full legalization, the costs of licensing, owning or renting property in areas zoned for cannabis jumped (a phenomenon elsewhere described as \u201ccannabis gentrification<\/a>.\u201d) Delahoussaye said that he and his partners were priced out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n And, once again, this process disproportionately affected Black entrepreneurs, Delahoussaye said. \u201cWe\u2019re locked out of this industry in a major, major way,\u201d he soberly concluded.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, how do you feel about cannabis \u201cequity\u201d programs?<\/p>\n The post California Controversies Over \u2018Social Equity\u2019 Licenses<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
More localities in California are putting in place \u201cequity license\u201d programs for cannabis dispensaries, prioritizing applicants from those communities that had been most gravely affected by cannabis prohibition and the war on drugs. Such programs are now officially encouraged under state law. But the continuing conflict over the equity programContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[148,50,14161,170,2462,14162,488,4166],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43918"}],"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\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43919,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43918\/revisions\/43919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Gaming the System<\/strong><\/h4>\n
New Rules for LA Licensing\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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The program had previously designated the areas to be prioritized by ZIP codes \u2013 but this often meant that wealthier and whiter areas got lumped in with poorer ones that suffered higher levels of cannabis arrests. As the LA Times noted, one of the eligible ZIP codes was 90027, which covers affluent stretches of Los Feliz neighborhood.\u00a0Under the new system, equity-prioritized areas will correspond to police reporting districts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/a>\u00a0
SEOWA\u00a0launched its suit<\/a>\u00a0in April, weeks after\u00a0release of an official audit<\/a>\u00a0giving the old system a clean bill of health. It found that although some applicants made it into the system ahead of time, the Department of Cannabis Regulation took \u201creasonable and appropriate\u201d measures to correct for any unfair advantage.<\/p>\nUnequal Access Means Unequal Arrest Rates<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Equity\u2019s Catch-22\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: California Controversies Over \u2018Social Equity\u2019 Licenses<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"