Tanzina: Yesterday on the show, we talked about the growing support for legalizing marijuana across the United States and the cannabis industry, that's showing no signs of slowing down. According to the Marijuana Business Factbook, the projected economic impact of the legal marijuana industry in the United States could reach $77 billion by 2022.

That doesn't mean everyone is benefiting from the industry's record-highs. Black people and other people of color, who have long been targeted by law enforcement for cannabis use, are facing significant barriers breaking into the legal cannabis business today. We spoke with marijuana advocate, author of How to Succeed in the Cannabis Industry, and the Cannabis Program Supervisor for the City of Portland, Oregon, Dasheeda Dawson. I asked Dasheeda, what exactly does a cannabis program supervisor for the city of Portland do?

Dasheeda: In essence, I oversee the office of Cannabis Program Management, all the licensing and compliance, the typical things that one would expect with owning a business within the adult-use, or medical cannabis market within the city of Portland. I also oversee the community education and cannabis competency, and equity programs as well within my office.

Tanzina: One of the big things we’ve been talking about on the show, as we are starting to see more movement towards decriminalizing and making even legal in some States, marijuana, particularly for recreational use, is that this is a huge business and yet only 4.3% of cannabis business owners are Black. Talk to us about some of the major barriers that have led to that.

Dasheeda: Unfortunately, we've seen a huge racial disparity in the arrests while cannabis was prohibited. One of the biggest things that was part of policy when the industry was first being developed, certainly the adult-use market starting with Colorado 10 years ago, is to prohibit individuals for prior arrests and convictions as it relates to cannabis from being in the industry. That, just being the policy, you couldn't be a worker, you couldn't be an owner.

We see a disproportionate amount of those people being prohibited, being Black, Indigenous and Latinx. That's a first real cause, but also the second, I would say would be us not bringing ourselves to the table out of fear. Again, being over-policed and most likely to be arrested for cannabis possession, as compared to our white counterparts, despite no more usage. It is really ingrained, multi-generationally ingrained in Black and Hispanic communities that being anything part of marijuana is bad.

It's been a combination of both just being purposely left out, based on the way the law has been written, but also culturally, it being something that remains in the underground. It's frowned upon if brought to light, or talked poorly about because of just the way its prohibition has impacted our communities.

Tanzina: Dasheeda, one of the most frustrating things about how marijuana policy in the country has evolved is that, I often talk about how I grew up in the ‘80s here in New York City. I recall witnessing the war on drugs, the effects of the crime bill, particularly in Black and brown communities that I grew up in, and seeing how many people were incarcerated for these crimes. Now, decades later, we're witnessing a birth of an industry here that is largely concentrated among white owners, and white business owners. How do we begin to get people of color, the capital that they need to set up these businesses?

Dasheeda: I think that's a great question. I'm also from New York, I'm from Brooklyn, New York, grew up during the war on drugs. One thing I will say out the gate is that, the industry has been going on for a decade in adult-use, multiple decades for medical. As recent as last year, there were videos of a young man getting assaulted by seven police officers because he smelled like he had been consuming marijuana.

New York City still has a long way to go, and we're still seeing a lot of the unwanted police interactions as a result of the smell. I still think the fear is a really big issue, but the money is another and that actually is, in a lot of ways dictated by the government. New York's medical market for example, only granted 10 licenses, which made it extremely competitive.

We talk about awarding a license to do business as opposed to just having the requirements, and so the money aspect comes into being able to jump through all of the hoops that the government has set up as the requirements to get a license. How much you have to have capitalized in the bank, and the like. Then, that leads us to an issue of, who has the funding.

Private equity funding in this country, generally is run by white males. Women and people of color, specifically Black people have a very big struggle with getting funding for projects, period but then you add the layer of cannabis, and it becomes a very difficult thing to even get funding from within your own community of people who are willing to support. We're starting to see that change a bit. I think the government has an opportunity to take the tax revenue and really reinvest it, providing some funding but I don't think it's going to close the gap, on what the regulatory framework calls for. We've got to do both.

Tanzina: There's also the question of criminal background and what I find mind-boggling is that someone could have done their time, have been incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses, is now out in this moment where people are taking advantage of the legal market to sell and consume marijuana, and yet those people who have been convicted of crimes are left out of the market, particularly because they have these convictions. Is part of the MORE Act, for example, attempting to expunge some of these records, so people can get a foothold in a market?

Dasheeda: Absolutely. I think over the last three years, cannabis equity has started to be defined and it's defined around those most adversely impacted. We know it starts with the individuals who were arrested and incarcerated. Most of the really top equity programs in the country, Illinois, Massachusetts, California, even what's going on in Oregon, you actually have to have that previous record to be defined as an equity-designated applicant. That can give you anywhere from funding support to prioritized processing, a lower or reduced licensing fee. In the state and local level, we've started to just change the way we think about the legality.

The policy shouldn't be that those people are left out. It should be that, we should be figuring out ways for equity to really be achieved. We've got to figure out how to get them in, if they want to be in. Some people may have done all of that, like you said, and they actually just want to open up another business, but they've not been able to get approved for funding because of their past.

To your point, expungement is really important and the MORE Act-- The acronym means Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement, and that expungement piece is something it does address. We, as the regulators in the industry have been very critical of the MORE Act though since its passing, because there were a lot of language that we were surprised by, that does the opposite of what we've been working on in the state and local level.

It expunges at the federal level, but doesn't expunge or mandate state-level expungement. Even in New York, we don't have expungement as a constitutional thing that we can do. In some ways, New York would need to be told by the federal government, “Hey, you need to create this and do it.” Then, there are other states that we just know would never do it, Georgia, Alabama, Kentucky. They wouldn't expunge without a mandate.

You leave people, unfortunately in that limbo state where they still really haven't gotten rid of their record. Where I'm from, [chuckles] Brooklyn, if you got a federal case, you also got a state case and it's like a 95%, 96% likelihood, especially in southern states. We're seeing some of it be answered, but my struggle is that we're not using common sense in our policy to fix this, even though we are admitting for the record and that's what that historic vote did, that it should never have been illegal to begin with.

Tanzina: Now, the vote has a very unlikely chance of passing the Senate, the makeup of the Senate could change. We're all waiting to see the results out of Georgia to see which way the Senate goes, but it would still be a pretty close-- The Senate would still be pretty close in terms of who has the majority, and who doesn’t if it really hinges on one person being elected at this point. Are you optimistic that a Biden administration will somehow move forward some of the things that we're talking about at the federal level, to make the MORE Act, for example, less of a symbolic move and more of something that actually has teeth to begin to make some of the changes that we're talking about here, on the show today?

Dasheeda: I am hopeful. I think that Madam VP-Elect, Kamala Harris really despite her history, she arrested a lot of people in California. The cannabis industry called her out on it but she came out to Colorado, she met with a lot of leaders within the cannabis industry. She gets it, and a lot of the laws she made as Senator in California really has been precedent across the country. She understands decriminalization.

I think where they make the mistake is that, instead of trying to free the people, they're really trying to free the plant and get us to the money faster, or the government to the money. We need to first deal with the people. One, as just a consumer marketing expert, before I got into the industry, I would say, it would make the market flourish. More people from the legacy market or underground market would move over, but also we're changing people's lives. We're making them more viable and employment and housing, all these different things that are insecure right now due to COVID. I think that she gets that, and I think that her influence on Biden from what I can tell means that he's going to be getting it as well.

Do I think that they are going to fully legalize? I'm not certain that he's convinced there, but they don't need to. They need to decriminalize, stop arresting people. Stop making things, like what happened last year to that young man in New York City happen, by just having ambiguity around whether cannabis should be illegal on the federal level. Now, that the World Health Organization has descheduled it and removed it from its most dangerous category, which for them is a Level 4, for us it's the Schedule I.

Basically, that means we have an ability and precedent to remove it. Once it gets removed from Schedule I, it changes the federal landscape on whether we should be arresting people and using SWAT. All of that is aligned with it, being dictated as a Schedule I. I think we're going to get there, for sure. I think that's actually in our best interest as Black and brown folks, to have it decriminalized because the part that's really damaging us are the arrests, over-policing. The incarceration that's removing people from their home and individuals coming out, inability to get homes and jobs. That's what's impacting our community as a whole.

Tanzina: The black market, Dasheeda is where a lot of folks continue to get their marijuana. You mentioned opening this up could mean that people who are in the black market could then move over to the legal side of things, but I'm wondering black market marijuana will probably be cheaper than legal marijuana for perhaps a variety of reasons. It's also a place where people have been able to make a living off of selling this on the black market. I'm wondering, how you see the black market evolving.

Dasheeda: California is the largest market, but the legacy market, which is what I call it at this point, because it existed before, it's still growing. It's thriving. It's actually benefiting from the decriminalization aspect. Where the government's missing out, is the ability to create programs that have people cross over from the legacy market to the legal market, and what does that mean?

It means that you're probably going to have to have some business-and-tax-structure type of programs but I also think, again, not having it be so many hoops that people have to jump through just to get the license. Like, if I'm just a distributor, aka the plug, do I need to get all of this federal bond, all these licenses in order for me to just distribute? I'm not sure if should be the case.

I think there are opportunities and things that I'm doing myself, within cannabis equity that are intended to pilot. We've got to test. We don't know what's going to happen without trying it, but to date, we haven't tried to actively just move the demand over by moving the market over. Instead, we've tried to just hyper-criminalize that market. That's not going to work. Our usage rate has not changed in 40 years, despite some of the harshest drug laws in the world.

Tanzina: The usage rate, it should be noted as you know Dasheeda, that Black and white Americans use marijuana at similar rates. It's just Black and brown Americans are criminalized for it more than white Americans are.

Dasheeda: Absolutely. Yes, I think that, [chuckles] that, in of itself is the story behind cannabis. When people of color actually recognize it, I think it changes their perspective, that when you're getting involved, yes, there's a business opportunity, but there's a real justice component for the people who are most adversely affected and directly affected, but even for people like myself. I was never arrested, but I grew up and I watched people get dropped to the ground [chuckles] for a dime bag.

That to me, I think has a psychological effect on how we think about cannabis, and that ultimately is impacting our health because at the end of the day, this is actually medicine. We're talking about an adult-use market or recreational, but the reality is the plant is still always medicinal regardless of the usage. It's a little bit of a personal fight for me, as well as a cannabis patient. We need these markets to do better, and I think we'll do better by including that diversity that exists in the legacy market.

Tanzina: Dasheeda Dawson is the author of How to Succeed in the Cannabis Industry and the Cannabis Program Supervisor for the city of Portland, Oregon. Dasheeda, thanks so much for joining us.

Dasheeda: Thank you for having me again, and I appreciate the conversation. It was great.

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