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Can America's Weed Industry Provide Reparations for the War on Drugs?
By Julia Alsop
May 28, 2016
This month, Oakland's City Council unanimously approved a program giving people with former marijuana convictions a leg-up when it comes to entering Oakland's growing legal cannabis industry—a move the City Council sees as a step towards reparations for the drug wars that, in part, led to a boom in America's prison population since the 1970s and targeted people of color.
While many states and districts actively ban people with past criminal convictions from participating as owners or employees in the country's increasingly legal billion-dollar marijuana industry, Oakland's new priority licenses program, called Oakland's Equity Program, reserves half of its marijuana business licenses for the recently incarcerated and people living in neighborhood directly impacted by the drug war.
For the last 18 months, Oakland's City Council has been in conversation with Oakland's Cannabis Regulatory Commission about what regulation and licensing should look like on the municipal level. The city's new regulations follow California Gov. Jerry Brown's 2014 announcement that the state would begin regulating and licensing its medical marijuana industry—which previously operated in an unregulated legal grey-area—tracking the business from seed to sale. The legislation provides state licenses for business, but leaves the power and discretion of licensing mostly in the hands of municipalities.
City Council Member Desley Brooks, who did not respond to request for comment, added a last-minute equity amendment to the licensing regulation that could set a precedent for future cannabis regulation. The amendment states the opportunity and profits from Oakland's medical marijuana business should be routed to the communities directly impacted and disproportionately affected by the drug wars, meaning communities in East Oakland comprised of people of color who deal with low-incomes, high unemployment rates, and, often, past criminal records.
In Oakland, arrests for marijuana possession or distribution have fallen since 2004, but African-American and Latinos still accounted for 85 percent of the city's marijuana-arrests in 2011 and 2013. Of the city's eight dispensaries, only one is black-owned.
"When you look at cannabis industry across nation," Brooks told NBC Bay Area on Wednesday, "it's dominated by people who are white and they make money. And the people who go to jail are black and brown. I wanted some parity. There needs to be equity in this industry."
cont http://www.vice.com/read/can-americas-weed-industry-provide-reparations-for-the-war-on-drugs
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WOW is all I can say.. well that and HELL YEAH!!
By Julia Alsop
May 28, 2016
This month, Oakland's City Council unanimously approved a program giving people with former marijuana convictions a leg-up when it comes to entering Oakland's growing legal cannabis industry—a move the City Council sees as a step towards reparations for the drug wars that, in part, led to a boom in America's prison population since the 1970s and targeted people of color.
While many states and districts actively ban people with past criminal convictions from participating as owners or employees in the country's increasingly legal billion-dollar marijuana industry, Oakland's new priority licenses program, called Oakland's Equity Program, reserves half of its marijuana business licenses for the recently incarcerated and people living in neighborhood directly impacted by the drug war.
For the last 18 months, Oakland's City Council has been in conversation with Oakland's Cannabis Regulatory Commission about what regulation and licensing should look like on the municipal level. The city's new regulations follow California Gov. Jerry Brown's 2014 announcement that the state would begin regulating and licensing its medical marijuana industry—which previously operated in an unregulated legal grey-area—tracking the business from seed to sale. The legislation provides state licenses for business, but leaves the power and discretion of licensing mostly in the hands of municipalities.
City Council Member Desley Brooks, who did not respond to request for comment, added a last-minute equity amendment to the licensing regulation that could set a precedent for future cannabis regulation. The amendment states the opportunity and profits from Oakland's medical marijuana business should be routed to the communities directly impacted and disproportionately affected by the drug wars, meaning communities in East Oakland comprised of people of color who deal with low-incomes, high unemployment rates, and, often, past criminal records.
In Oakland, arrests for marijuana possession or distribution have fallen since 2004, but African-American and Latinos still accounted for 85 percent of the city's marijuana-arrests in 2011 and 2013. Of the city's eight dispensaries, only one is black-owned.
"When you look at cannabis industry across nation," Brooks told NBC Bay Area on Wednesday, "it's dominated by people who are white and they make money. And the people who go to jail are black and brown. I wanted some parity. There needs to be equity in this industry."
cont http://www.vice.com/read/can-americas-weed-industry-provide-reparations-for-the-war-on-drugs
..............................................................
WOW is all I can say.. well that and HELL YEAH!!
