BY Michael O’keeffe
Marvin Washington enjoys attending cannabis business expos, but the
former Jets defensive end says there’s one thing about marijuana
industry events he finds discouraging – few of his fellow ganja
entrepreneurs look like him.
Washington says African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities are
woefully underrepresented in the legal marijuana industry, which is
expected to generate more than $7 billion in sales this year. So are
women, according to Washington, who is 51 but still looks like he can
instill fear in quarterbacks.
The ex-Jet says he hopes minorities and
women will get their fair share of the jobs and business opportunities
created by marijuana’s march to the mainstream.
“I don’t want this industry to look like Silicon Valley,” says
Washington, the co-founder of Isodiol Performance, a company that makes
THC-free hemp sports drinks. “When the plant was illegal, we were
overrepresented in terms of incarceration and the prison-industrial
complex. I want us to have a seat at the table when this becomes a $50
billion a year industry in 10 years.”
Washington and other African-American athletes have been at the
forefront of the budding movement to legalize marijuana for recreational
and medical purposes. Weed, they argue, is a safe alternative to
painkillers and a treatment for brain injuries. Marijuana, they add, can
also spark significant economic development in their communities.
Washington isn’t hyping legal pot’s potential growth. Voters in five
states - California, Massachusetts, Maine, Arizona and Nevada – will
cast ballots Tuesday on measures that would legalize recreational use
for adults. Florida, Arkansas, Montana and North Dakota, meanwhile, will
vote on medical marijuana proposals. The new programs could provide
legislative relief to some of the marijuana barriers minorities face.
Washington says he also hopes those new markets will create jobs and
businesses – and that black and brown people get their fair share.
“I don’t want affirmative action or set-asides,” Washington says. “I want a level playing field.”
Washington is hardly the only black athlete hoping to push marijuana,
legal for medical or recreational purposes in the District of Columbia
and 25 states, including New York, from outlaw weed to mainstream
product. Giants great Leonard Marshall speaks about the benefits of cannabidiol,
a non-intoxicating compound found in marijuana, in treating headaches
and other painful reminders of his NFL career.
Tennessee Titans
linebacker Derrick Morgan and the Baltimore Ravens’ Eugene Monroe,
meanwhile, have called on the NFL to remove marijuana from its banned substance list and fund research into pot’s potential as a sports medicine.
Former NBA star Cliff Robinson announced earlier this year that he is opening a marijuana dispensary in Oregon,
where voters approved a ballot measure that legalized the recreational
use of weed in 2014. Al Harrington and John Salley recently told ESPN’s
The Undefeated they use marijuana to ease pain and inflammation. Hoops
great Oscar Robertson backed a pro-pot measure defeated by Ohio voters
last year. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has said he uses medical marijuana to
stave off migraine headaches.
African-American athletes may make headlines, but that hasn’t
translated into much of a stake in the legal marijuana industry. Only a
handful of the nation’s 4,000 licensed marijuana dispensaries, however,
are owned by African-Americans, says Wanda James, the president of the
Cannabis Global Initiative, a consulting firm.
“Less than one percent are black-owned,” says James, also the president
of Simply Pure, a Denver dispensary. “We think there are 10.”
Colorado cannabis industry consultant Ryan Kingsbury says the
industry’s lack of diversity is ironic, since weed was long the province
of artists, musicians and other outsiders who easily cross racial
lines. He hopes things change when California, with its massive economic
might and rich ethnic mix, passes its recreational use proposal as
expected on Tuesday. “The cannabis industry is still in its infancy,” he
says. “I think you’ll see more people of color as the industry
matures.”
The marijuana industry’s unbearable whiteness is due in part to
demographics; the states that have already passed recreational marijuana
measures and are at the center of the industry - Colorado, Washington,
Oregon and Alaska – are not as racially diverse as California or New
York.
Governments have thrown up obstacles, too. A black-owned company,
Alternative Medicine Maryland, filed a lawsuit Monday against the
Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission that claimed the state did not
consider racial diversity as required by law when it awards licenses to
grow pot.
None of the companies given preliminary approval are owned by
African-Americans.
Some states bar people with criminal records from working in the
industry, a policy Washington and other marijuana advocates say is
unfair because the black community has taken a disproportionate hit in
the war on drugs.
“It is like the government saying in the 1940s that your grandfather
couldn’t own a bar because he ran moonshine in the 1920s,” says Asha
Bandele of the Drug Policy Alliance. “Marijuana should not have been
made illegal in the first place.”
Some government hurdles are inadvertent. A 2014 Florida law that
approved the medical use of cannabis with low levels of THC, pot’s
euphoria-causing compound, required growers to have at least 30 years in
the nursery business, and to have grown at least 400,000 plants.
“The unintended consequence was the exclusion of African-American
entrepreneurs and the rewarding of affluent individuals who work with
consultants, investors, etc. to develop their applications” says Florida
businessman Garyn Angel, whose company sells a botanical extractor
called Magical Butter that helps chefs create THC-infused cooking oils.
Some of the roadblocks come from within the black community itself.
James says the older generation of clergy, lawmakers and other black
community leaders discouraged participation in the industry. Former
Denver mayor Wellington Webb, the first African-American to lead the
city, has appeared in commercials denouncing efforts to legalize
marijuana in Arizona, she says.
Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, and that makes black
entrepreneurs fear they will be the first targets if a new
administration wants to crack down on the y legal weed trade. “People of
color are terrified of police harassment,” James says. “There is no
trust in law enforcement.”
California’s Prop 64 addresses some of those cannabis business
barriers. Prop 64 would not only legalize marijuana, it would also make
prisoners serving sentences for convictions that would be legal under
the proposal eligible for resentencing. They could also apply to have
their criminal records expunged, clearing the way for them to work in
the industry.
“It is an opportunity to allow people to come back,” Bandele says. “It is an opportunity for people to remake the law.”
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