Does the legal marijuana industry have a race problem?

Co-owners of the recreational marijuana store, Bud Nation, strive to maintain a diverse set of employees in an industry that is predominantly white. From left to right, co-owners Michael Gordon, Paul Kim, Elizabeth Gordon and employee David Campbell.

By Emily Muirhead

For decades, people of color have paid a heavy price for the war on drugs. It’s well known that minorities are arrested and jailed at disproportionate rates on marijuana-related charges. But, now that recreational weed is legal in Washington, are those same people who were once likely to be racially profiled reaping the benefits of the industry of legal pot?

What we found
We cold-called 270 marijuana producers, processors and recreational retailers in Washington state to determine who exactly is running and being employed by these pot shops, and who is actually benefitting.
Out of the producers and processors we were able to make contact with, 110 provided employee demographic information consistent with what could be expected: The marijuana industry is mostly saturated with white males, many of whom are not only employed by businesses but also run them.

Despite marijuana’s newfound legality, for some people of color entering this business is understandably wary territory, if not entirely out of the question. The American Civil Liberty Union’s War on Marijuana report found that, “a Black person is 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than a white person, even though Blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates.”

However, out of the several retailers we were able to speak with in the Seattle area, 40 percent of their employees are people of color (defined as non-Caucasian, but included mixed-race individuals), as compared to about 9 percent for producers and processors across the state.

Racial disparities? 
Minority employment in legal weed actually seems to be consistent with statewide racial statistics. About 30 percent of Washington’s population is nonwhite, and about 4 percent is black, according to the 2013 US Census. Seattle also happens to rank as the fourth city with the lowest number of black-owned businesses, according to the Census Survey of Business Owners.
“When they did the lottery [for recreational licenses] there wasn’t one African American as a winner,” said Michael Gordon, who is black, and a partial owner at White Center’s Bud Nation.

“Then it kinda set a precedent for becoming a predominantly white male culture.”
Marijuana retailers from I-502 shops seemed to consistently have more diverse staff, and more women employees than production and processing operations. However, many of the producers and processors said their minority employment increases during harvest season, with more women and Hispanics being seasonally employed.

A Liquor and Cannabis Board spokesman said the state does not keep any racial demographic information on marijuana business owners or applicants.
Institutionalized racial divides
“I think it’s quite reflective of other industries and of society in general where you see this lack of diversity at a business-owner level,” said Oscar Velasco-Schmitz, Hispanic owner of Dockside Cannabis. “In general, you see a disparity in diversity at a ownership level because of lack of opportunity.”

Harry Levine, a professor at City University of New York who has extensively studied racial discrimination in marijuana-related arrests, agreed that this is more of a traditionally systematic problem rather than a racial one.
“When [businesses] are just starting up, people hire their friends, their relatives, people they were working with before,” said Levine. “Typically when starting a new business, it’s done by people of means and standings.

It’s done by people who have plenty of capital to sustain themselves and this venture. This excludes lots of ordinary people of any race, or gender for that matter, so you would expect the industry to be racially [skewed].”
To apply for a recreational marijuana license it costs $250, and is cheaper than in other states, according to Mikhail Carpenter of the LCB. But a cheap price tag on an application fee cannot guarantee a diverse market of ownership. Nor can it guarantee social justice for people of color who want to now enter the industry that once would have made them a criminal, but still may not have the means to make a living in it.
Should we be paying more attention to racial disparity in the legal weed scene, or just let the market figure it out?

Targeted by feds?
One former marijuana business owner, Brionne Corbray, who is black, knows all too well what the answer should be.
Corbray was formerly the owner of three G.A.M.E. Collective marijuana dispensaries across Seattle. He was initially seen as being a successful local black entrepreneur in the cannabis industry, but in 2012 he was hit with federal felony charges.
Corbray was prosecuted and pled guilty to conspiracy to deal drugs based on a series of undercover sting operations led by the Drug Enforcement Administration on his dispensaries.

Corbray has consistently denied the allegations and says he did everything according to state law, which was widely acknowledge to have created a “grey market” that proliferated throughout the state for a more than a dozen years. He said he only pled guilty under the advice of his attorney who told him fighting back against federal law — under which marijuana is still illegal — was futile, especially because he is black.
When Corbray first hoped to own a dispensary, he was wary from the get-go because of his race.

He even drove to Olympia to speak with the Secretary of State to make sure that as long as he followed the rules, the state government would not get involved. In the end, Corbray’s dreams for a long-term successful business fell apart.
“What’s crazy is that all that legitimate paperwork I had was used against me somehow, even my licenses because it’s against federal law,” Corbray said. “If I had been white, this never would have happened. Period.”

Barriers to success
Despite fear of being racially profiled, some people of color try to enter this industry, and still fail due to bureaucratic obstacles linked to education, access and wealth.
“I definitely think more minorities should get involved in this industry from the beginning, instead of having to try catching up later on so they’ll have a higher success rate,” said Paul Kim, Korean owner of Bud Nation. “But it’s very hard. Reason being, there are strict requirements like a criminal and financial background checks or fingerprinting, which some minorities don’t pass, which is just another barrier to this industry.”

Kim also says language barriers are a factor preventing some people of color from obtaining licenses in this potentially lucrative industry.
Partial owner of Bud Nation and wife of Michael Gordon pointed out the inherent racial hypocrisy of the industry. “When marijuana is illegal it’s fine for people of color to be the ones growing, dealing and getting arrested, but when it becomes legalized it all changes.”