How black Americans are losing out in the legal marijuana industry

Bonnie Kristian

Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images

 

With recreational and/or medicinal marijuana use legal in a growing number of states, some places (most obviously Colorado) are experiencing a weed boom. But per an investigation from BuzzFeed News, it's a bonus that has mostly been unavailable to black Americans thanks to the lingering legacy of the drug war. Here's the crux of the issue:

Even though research shows people of all races are about equally likely to have broken the law by growing, smoking, or selling marijuana, black people are much more likely to have been arrested for it. Black people are much more likely to have ended up with a criminal record because of it.

And every state that has legalized medical or recreational marijuana bans people with drug felonies from working at, owning, investing in, or sitting on the board of a cannabis business. After having borne the brunt of the "war on drugs," black Americans are now largely missing out on the economic opportunities created by legalization.

Ironically, experience in this new industry may be a legal disadvantage.

BuzzFeed could not obtain any hard numbers on the racial composition of legal marijuana dispensary owners, but the data collected from some 150 interviews for the piece suggest black dispensary ownership is in the neighborhood of just 1 percent.

By contrast, black business ownership across all industries is far higher — about 7 percent and growing at triple the national rate — according to data from 2011 and 2012.