In Communities of Color, Fighting for a Stake in the Legal Cannabis Market
The Political Scene | The New Yorker
The New Yorker
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 September 2019
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
People of color have suffered disproportionately under cannabis criminalization, and social-justice advocates have played a major role in the push for legalization; Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” changed many people’s minds on this issue. But, as the legal cannabis market takes off into a multibillion-dollar economy, this “green rush” is likely to leave behind those who suffered. An entrepreneur in New York tells the staff writer Jelani Cobb that “while we’re waiting [for legalization], huge corporations are . . . working on their packaging, how they’re going to come to the market. If we don’t have that same freedom, how is it fair?” Cobb reports on how legalization bills are seeking to address that historical inequity. In Oakland, California, a bill stipulates that half of dispensary permits must be awarded to people who have been harmed by criminalization in the past. But one businessman tells Cobb that, without access to capital, would-be dispensary owners will be shut out, and will likely end up selling those permits for cheap.
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| 1:11.4 | I'm Dorothy Wickendon On today's Politics and More podcast, the New Yorker's |
| 1:16.8 | Jelani Cobb reports on the burgeoning marijuana industry. The war on drugs has disproportionately |
| 1:23.5 | affected communities of color and some hope that opportunities in the marijuana |
| 1:28.4 | business may help address that inequity. |
| 1:34.5 | In states that haven't legalized, the drug trade goes on as it always has. Here in New York, |
| 1:41.1 | a legalization bill failed recently, but people are still expecting the change |
| 1:45.7 | to come sooner or later. |
| 1:47.9 | And so entrepreneurs are racing to get a foothold in the market before legalization. |
| 1:52.4 | Jelani Cobb, who's a staff writer at The New Yorker, has been looking into this nascent |
| 1:56.7 | cannabis economy, who's benefiting and who's not. |
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