Arkansas’ five existing medical cannabis cultivators have filed a lawsuit to challenge the state’s decision to issue three additional cultivation licenses, according to an Arkansas Times report.
The Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission voted last month to release the remaining cultivation licenses permitted by law, as well as four additional dispensary licenses.
The lawsuit, filed by Osage Creek Cultivation, Delta Medical Cannabis, Bold Team, Natural State Medicinals Cultivation and Natural State Wellness Enterprises, alleges that the new cultivation licenses violate rules that additional licenses should only be issued if it is determined that the existing cultivators are unable to adequately supply the state’s dispensaries, Arkansas Times reported.
The suit also claims that because regulators waited more than 24 months to issue the new licenses, a new application process is required by law, rather than choosing licensees from the pool of original applicants, according to the news outlet.
Defendants named in the lawsuit include the Arkansas Finance and Administration Department, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Division, the Medical Marijuana Commission and the three new cultivation licensees: Carpenter Farms Medical Group, River Valley Relief Cultivation and New Day Cultivation, Arkansas Times reported.
The lawsuit requests an injunction against the issuance of the new licenses, or that they be voided if they have already been awarded, according to the news outlet.
Josemaria Toscano | Adobe Stock
Building on Portland’s Vision of Equity: Q&A with Cannabis Program Supervisor Dasheeda Dawson
Dawson discusses her role in the city’s cannabis program and her goals for expanding its Social Equity Grant program to support more entrepreneurs.
Portland’s Office of Community & Civic Life named Dasheeda Dawson as its new cannabis program supervisor earlier this month, in some ways ushering in a new chapter of the city’s Social Equity Grant program.
Portland voters passed a 3% tax on adult-use cannabis in 2016, and since then, more than $6 million of the tax revenue has funded infrastructure improvements, drug rehabilitation, small business support, economic opportunities and technical assistance for business owners from communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs.
Dawson, who has over a decade of business development, strategic management and brand marketing experience, as well as more recent experience as a cannabis industry educator and strategy expert, hopes to build on the city’s existing vision of equity to further strengthen the Social Equity Grant program.
Here, Dawson discusses her new role and her goals for expanding the program to support more underserved entrepreneurs.
Melissa Schiller: What is the Office of Community & Civic Life’s role in Portland’s cannabis program?
Dasheeda Dawson: Portland, or Oregon in general, was one of the first states to legalize medical marijuana and then adult-use, so the program’s been around since 2015. [I believe] where cannabis regulation happens is often the mindset in which it’s regulated. Portland has put the regulation of the program under the Office of Community & Civic Life, which also oversees liquor and noise and other community-based components. The cannabis program, since its inception, is the core licensing and compliance oversight for the cannabis industry in the city of Portland.
MS: What was your background and experience prior to joining the Office of Community & Civic Life?
DD: I am a former Fortune 500 senior executive. I spent some time at Target and Victoria’s Secret, so my expertise is more in consumer and retail strategy, business management, supply chain and the like . I transitioned into the industry [five years ago] as a strategy and management consultant. I’ve worked for and with a lot of different entities as it pertains to cannabis in the United States and abroad. I have been for a long time working with municipalities as a consultant as they roll out the regulatory frameworks.
Before becoming the supervisor, I have been the chief strategy officer for Minorities for Medical Marijuana. I’m on the board for Doctors for Cannabis Regulation, which is the first organization of physicians to support legalization, and I’m one of the only non-physicians on the board. I’ve been on the Oregon Cannabis Commission Subcommittee. The commission is put together to advise the Oregon state regulatory bodies of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission and the Oregon Health Authority. I’m on a subcommittee of that Oregon Cannabis Commission around regulatory frameworks.
I’ve been talking for a while in terms of what we can do better to set up a policy and a regulatory structure that’s more equitable and successful for the cannabis economy. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past four years or so, and now I’m excited to be joining the city of Portland and really leading the charge with creating equity for cannabis, particularly given its history.
MS: What does the cannabis program supervisor role entail, and how will it allow you to accomplish your goals surrounding equity?
DD: The role is very similar to any other state’s cannabis regulatory oversight leader. I believe Toi Hutchinson is called a special advisor to the governor at the state level [in Illinois]. Cat Packer is another woman of color who’s doing it in L.A. for the [Department of Cannabis Regulation]. It varies because every market is different, but I’m the creative and strategic lead for the city as it pertains to cannabis regulations, compliance, policy recommendations, equity [and] education, [which is] 360 education [for the] workforce, consumers, general community and city.
I’m excited because I have the ability to take everything I’ve learned, the various experiences and learnings and insights, and build on the vision that’s already been in place in the city of Portland. In 2016, Portland was one of the first cities to vote on and begin to implement a social equity grant fund that was based on the cannabis tax revenue in the city. So, in some ways, Portland—although not a lot of people know about it because we talk a lot about California and Colorado as far as thought leadership on equity and creating an open market space—it’s certainly been at the forefront for our country.
MS: What is the Portland Social Equity Grant program? Who qualifies for the program, and what resources does it provide?
DD: It’s still in its infant stages in that it’s only been three cycles that we’ve delivered against. In the statute, it’s very clear there are three areas where the cannabis tax revenue needs to go. Over the last [few] years , 80% of the cannabis tax revenue has actually gone to the police department. In light of the recent climate, the [Portland] City Council voted for a divestment of those funds from the police department, so whereas we’ve only really historically been able to give out a half a million in grants, going into this new fiscal year, that has been increased to a million.
The grants are really global as far as equity—they’re not directly for cannabis companies or people of color, Black or indigenous folks who want to open a business in cannabis. There are a lot of different programs, so these are educational and development initiatives, meaning that the devastation related to prohibition has been very global and intergenerational, so our goal is to give support to the cannabis industry directly, for sure, as part of it, but our grants have really gone the distance on expungement and more wraparound reentry services around housing. We’re supporting some cannabis workforce educational development. Grants have been utilized to also provide support to nonprofit organizations that are helping POCs enter the cannabis industry. So, again, it’s a portfolio that we’re hoping to balance and expand as we get more access to the cannabis tax revenue.
MS: What are some of your broader goals for the Social Equity program going forward? Are there any specific areas that you’re looking to expand with the additional funding?
DD: Of course, we’d love to give out more grant funding, so we’re excited about that opportunity. I keep calling it SEED initiatives, and SEED stands for social equity and educational development initiatives. I think that they are more inclusive of a broader perspective of what we believe equity is. People are so focused on: How many owners do we have in the industry? And that’s the start of a broader conversation, but as a person who grew up in Brooklyn, New York, which is overpoliced and targeted for some of these same things we’re discussing, it’s been the community-based organizations that suffer the most, and their constituents. So, the initial goal will be to continue to identify community-based organizations on the ground in Portland that are working specifically with these communities that have been targeted. In Oregon and Portland specifically, that is definitely Black and indigenous populations. While we identify them, we’ll be identifying opportunities, perhaps, to fund their work further.
We’re also really in need of educational development for new and developing businesses that have never worked with government before, so we’re hoping to build a technical assistance program pilot that allows us to help facilitate folks as they’re trying to apply for a grant and then manage a grant. Some of the things I think we assume is that if we just give money, then there’s going to be some significant difference, and I think there’s more to the ecosystem of equity in order for us to impact it, so we have to start building out what that looks like.
I think it’s really important just to reiterate that any cannabis regulatory program, for the most part across the country, has a lot of the same core function or core competency. Ultimately, it’s to license businesses and then to ensure they’re in compliance. We’re doing that, and that is what we should be doing, but I think the vision of the program is really to be a leading industry framework that’s designed to capitalize on the reparative and restorative potential of this global cannabis legalization movement. In other states and other jurisdictions, I think the design is really to capitalize on what they believe the tax revenue will be, and in this case, I feel the vision of the program has always been, how do we take licensing and compliance that we do so well, which actually funds the program itself, and assure that we’re feeding it to the cannabis economy in a positive way that one, drives more cannabis tax revenue that can be used to support these cannabis SEED initiatives?
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited for style, length and clarity.
The Pass Brings Cannabis to the Berkshires with Adult-Use Dispensary Launch: The Starting Line
Co-Founder and President Michael Cohen shares insight into the vertically integrated company’s launch into Massachusetts’ adult-use market and the opening of its first dispensary in the Berkshires.
Helping to build a brand-new industry is generally a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but for Michael Cohen, co-founder and president of The Pass, a vertically integrated adult-use cannabis operator in Massachusetts, the cannabis industry gave him a second opportunity to be at the start of something big.
Cohen launched one of the first internet ad buying agencies in 1996, when online advertising was in its infancy.
“I was part of this string of industry professionals where we were all true believers,” Cohen says. “People would say, ‘I don’t get online advertising, I would never click on one of those banners.’ We would tell people, ‘This is the future of marketing,’ and three years later, it was just booming.”
Cohen sold the company and turned to consulting and investing as he waited for his next business opportunity. Now, almost 20 years later, he’s found it in the cannabis industry.
Cohen and his partner, Chris Weld, have been building their cannabis business for nearly three years, and currently hold three licenses in Massachusetts for cultivation, processing and retail. They operate indoor and greenhouse cultivation facilities in Sheffield, Mass., in Berkshire County, and have a provisional license for an outdoor grow site. The Pass opened its first dispensary location in the Berkshires July 17 and has the option to open two more storefronts with its current retail license.
“When we first started, when we were interviewing lawyers, our first question to our lawyer was, ‘What are the chances we’re going to end up in handcuffs?’” Cohen says. “That was an issue for us. It just felt like there was a lot more stigma three years ago. … We’re just really proud to be creating a product that provides people with inspiration, relaxation, relief and stimulation.”
Photos courtesy of The Pass
The vertically integrated company opened its first dispensary location in the Berkshires July 17.
Cohen describes the Berkshires as “an intersection of nature and culture,” a place where families visit to connect with nature and art, and he has worked to make his dispensary an extension of that.
“The Pass brand we also believe is representative of the cannabis experience,” he says. “The Pass stands for ‘permission.’ We’ve been given the pass to consume—this is now legal. It represents communal sharing. It represents passing from one state to another. It represents the mountain passes in which we live … and getting from one hard-to-reach place to another.”
Preparing for Opening Day
Leading up to the dispensary’s grand opening on July 17, Cohen and his team were busily training retail staff, setting up merchandising displays and, of course, grappling with the necessary precautions to keep employees and customers safe during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
The Pass hired 25 new retail employees for its Berkshires store, and Cohen says he became emotional walking into the conference room this past week to give a presentation to the new hires.
“You have this idea, then you start pursuing it, and I’ve had so many of these over the years just not come to fruition, and this one really has,” he says. “We’re so proud to be working in the cannabis industry.”
The Pass has 40 total employees for its vertically integrated operations, and Cohen hopes to expand his staff to 50 by the end of the month as it hires for cultivation, manufacturing, logistics and sales positions.
The Pass operates indoor and greenhouse cultivation facilities in Sheffield, Mass.
“It’s so amazing to be able to provide a full range of jobs and career opportunities for people in the Berkshires, which is a place that has been hard hit by COVID, like others,” he says. “It’s historically a beautiful place to raise a family, but a hard place to make a living. We have jobs for people who need to feed themselves and we have serious career opportunities in an industry that is a generational business opportunity.”
“I just remember building a team back in the ’90s and how amazing it was to be a part of a team of people who really believed in what they were doing,” Cohen adds. “We were doing something really exciting, and it’s like the same thing all over again, 20 years later. We’re really trying to build a culture—we’re building a diverse culture of people that really want to be here and I’m totally thrilled.”
The Pass cultivates 40 different varieties of cannabis, and its cultivation team has completed its first harvest at the indoor facility in Sheffield. The greenhouse has been planted, with some rows just beginning to flower.
“The guys who grow [the plants], they talk about it like a sommelier talks about wine,” Cohen says. “They’re just in love with the plants.”
With final inspections recently completed by the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission, The Pass’ packaging operations are now in full swing to package the vape cartridges, concentrates, edibles, tinctures and topicals produced at the company’s processing facility.
The Pass is also in the process of launching its marketing efforts, which include a billboard and a print ad in Berkshire Magazine.
The Pass produces and sells vape cartridges, concentrates, edibles, tinctures and topicals.
When Massachusetts reopened after shutting down nonessential businesses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, adult-use cannabis dispensaries could reopen for curbside service only, and The Pass set to work creating SOPs for curbside pickup.
Now, the dispensary is permitted to offer in-store sales with a limited number of people allowed in the store at any given time, and the Pass requires all staff and customers to wear masks at all times.
“One of the nice things about our space is it’s really lofty,” Cohen says. “It’s a big open barn, a modern barn. The ceilings are really high, and it feels spacious, but obviously, we have the stickers on the floor to mark 6 feet. … We’re taking it seriously.”
Upcoming Plans
Now that the dispensary has officially opened, Cohen is most excited to learn who The Pass’ customers are and which products they are most interested in.
All aspects of the company’s supply chain maintain constant communication, so the processing team can design its products around the specific genetics produced by the cultivation team. In addition, the retail space is located adjacent to the lab, which allows the processing team to answer the dispensary staff’s questions or address concerns about specific products.
“Education and listening are a really big part of the process from a retail standpoint,” Cohen says. “We’ll have all these different consumers who will be coming for all these different needs and many will have a lot of questions, so we want to educate them.”
The Pass' dispensary is a lofty, modern barn with high ceilings, which Cohen says works well to promote social distancing during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
Although The Pass’ specific sales analytics remain to be seen, Cohen has been studying the sales data in Massachusetts and has found that flower comprises 50% to 60% of the market, whereas vape cartridges and edibles make up 10% to 15% of all cannabis sales.
“I think that with COVID, which attacks the lungs, it’s reasonable to think that edibles and tinctures will probably be a product group that grows in this current environment,” he says. “I think that flower is king, and I think for us, we’re creating a full range of products, and we’ll probably want to expand on that over time.”
The Pass plans to sell its products in other dispensaries throughout Massachusetts, and it already carries other brands’ products in its store, as well.
“Our short-term goals are to be a viable, successful business, to provide a full range of experience, to enhance our consumers’ lives [and] to broaden a higher level of consciousness,” Cohen says. “We are committed to education. We are committed to inhibiting underage consumption. … We want to provide people with career opportunities and development opportunities. We want to make a positive impact on our community and our environment. We want to be responsible stewards of the plant and of our products."
LEMONNADE Set to Open in Sacramento
LEMONNADE, a sister company to Cookies, will be a sativa-focused dispensary chain.
SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 16, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -PRESS RELEASE-LEMONNADE, a sativa-focused cannabis dispensary brand, is set to launch in Sacramento on July 19.
LEMONNADE is the sister company of Cookies, the cannabis and lifestyle brand founded by San Francisco-based rapper Berner. The hip-hop artist partnered with breeder Brett Wilson to create a dispensary experience emphasizing sativa strains.
"We didn't see anyone really focusing on the sativa consumers, and most of the flavor profiles for the existing sativas on the market were extremely similar and old," Berner said. "We decided to build a brand followed by a retail experience that focused on flavorful and new sativa varieties. I'm excited to launch LEMONNADE retails, especially because we spent the last four years in R&D mode building this menu. We will carry hybrids and indicas too, but you can expect a wide variety of sativas and a very unique retail experience when you come to LEMONNADE."
The dispensary will start with 15 original LEMONNADE sativa strains, a wide array of infused products and the first drop of LEMONNADE apparel. The store will try to bring a warm and welcoming environment to Sacramento with an open layout and socially distanced shopping.
"Sacramento has always had love for Berner. A Cookies and a LEMONNADE store in the City of Trees is a dream come true," said Hayk Serobyan of 3HHG Group, the local retail partner for LEMONNADE.
Like its sister brand, Cookies—which has recently partnered with legendary rapper Rick Ross and former NBA star Gary Payton —LEMONNADE is collaborating on new branded strains and other products with a number of recording artists, designers and cannabis influencers.
The nationwide LEMONNADE roll out continues this summer with two locations planned to open in Portland, Ore., and more across California.
Screenshot of "Reimagining Justice" on Facebook Live
Justice Reimagined: How Cannabis Has Been Used as Tool for Oppression
Speakers, including those from the cannabis and entertainment industries, religious institutions and law enforcement, discussed how racism fueled the war on drugs and how targeted criminalization is behind the criminal-justice system today.
Over Father’s Day weekend in 2013, Jawara McIntosh, son of reggae musician Peter Tosh and himself a father of four, was arrested for marijuana possession. After making bail later that year, he was given a plea deal of 20 years in prison, but finding it outlandish, proceeded through years of pretrial motions. Over time, he received more favorable offers. Then, despite his devout Rastafari religion, Jawara struck a plea deal in 2017 for a six-month sentence, lest he “be made an example of,” as his sister Niambe McIntosh tells the story.
Jawara lived in the Bergen County, New Jersey, jail for a month and a half in 2017 for the possession charge, his first, before a fellow inmate attacked him, causing him to suffer a traumatic brain injury. Today, he can’t talk or walk, and he needs 24-hour care.
After the attack, the family visited the intensive care unit. When they arrived, Jawara’s face was swollen, tubes were stuck down his throat. He wore, as dictated by the legal system, a brace on his neck and a handcuff on his ankle.
“It was devastating to see that here he is fighting for his life, but treated like an animal, with a handcuff on his ankle,” said Niambe McIntosh, executive director of the Peter Tosh Estate. “And when we asked the hospital about the handcuff and if we could remove this—that’s not helping his medical condition—they told us that the prison had hierarchy over the hospital. And we were also told that we were lucky that we could visit my brother.”
Jawara’s is one of the many stories shared during Marijuana Policy Project’s July 15 virtual live event “Reimagining Justice: Race, Cannabis & Policing,” streamed on Facebook and YouTube and using the hashtag #ReimaginingJustice. The speakers throughout the three-and-a-half-hour event spoke about how politicians made cannabis use illegal through racist motives and policies; how police use the plant as a weapon against Black and brown people; what a better image of justice can look like; and how to reverse harms.
Panel 1: Cannabis Criminalization and Oppressive Policing in Communities of Color
In the event’s first panel, moderated by journalist Roland Martin, The Equity Organization Founder and Executive Director Natalie Papillion spoke about the racism that fueled the criminalization of cannabis. After the early requirement of farmers in various colonies to grow hemp and the end of slavery, cannabis became popular with Black people in the U.S.’s South, including musicians and entertainers like Louis Armstrong.
Papillion noted how one of the foremost opponents of cannabis in the 1930s was Harry Anslinger, who had worked as a prohibition officer. She read his quote, “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” and another of his quotes about interracial sexual relations that were meant to upset the white majority.
Screenshot of "Reimagining Justice" on Facebook Live
Natalie Papillion
Soon afterward, the Justice Roundtable Executive Director Nkechi Taifa, spoke about the official “War on Drugs,” beginning in 1971. She shared how Richard Nixon’s domestic policy chief between late 1969 and early 1973, John Ehrlichman, admitted that the White House, despite conducting a militarized war in Vietnam, viewed Black people and “the antiwar left” as its two enemies.
Ehrlichman told Harper's Magazine: “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Later, during Bill Clinton’s Administration, came the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. Taifa said: “That crime bill in 1994 featured the largest expansion of the death penalty in modern times, the gutting of habeas corpus, the evisceration of the exclusionary rule, the cutting out of Pell educational grants, the trying of 13-year-olds as adults, the refusal to address the crack-powder [cocaine] disparity, and more and more money given to more and more states, to lock up more and more people, for longer periods of time.”
Martin and the panelists provided this history to outline how the system of uneven oppression of marijuana crimes and the plant’s stigmatization came into being. Much of what followed in the first panel and the others referenced back to it.
The “Cannabis Criminalization” panel also featured commentary from Neill Franklin, executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, who spent 34 years working with the Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Department. In that time, he oversaw 17 separate drug task forces.
Out of the hundreds of thousands of arrests officers make every year for marijuana possession alone, Franklin pointed out that a disproportionate number of those arrests are of Black people. An American Civil Liberties Union analysis of Federal Bureau of Investigations statistics found that Black people are on average arrested 3.64 times more than white people in situations where the possession offense was the highest charge in a given police interaction.
“Meaningful police reform cannot happen as long as we have marijuana prohibition in this country,” Franklin said. “We have to end it from coast to coast. Most of the searches that we experience today in law enforcement are the result of marijuana. The street-corner searches that police are doing on our citizens, the car stops—it is because of the odor of marijuana that the police are walking up to people, stopping cars, smelling—or saying they smell—marijuana, and then conducting searches.”
No matter the basis for a traffic stop, the Stanford Open Policing Project has found that Black drivers are pulled over at higher rates than white people, as a percentage of an area’s population.
Franklin also noted that a process called civil forfeiture allows police to take “money from people on a daily basis all across this country, not arresting them, not charging them with crimes. The No. 1 tool for doing that … the odor of marijuana gets me into your pockets, it gets me into your cars, it gets me into your homes, to take whatever I think might be tied to the illicit drug trade—selling marijuana or anything else,” said the police veteran. “And I don’t have to explain myself for doing it because it’s a civil process.”
Rev. Jamal Bryant of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Lithonia, Ga., spoke about his belief that people who have a history working in the illicit-cannabis market should be given a chance in the legal industry.
To exemplify this, Bryant, a Baltimore native, spoke of a gun buyback program he hosted four years ago when he was pastor of that city’s Empowerment Temple AME. When people showed up with military-grade weaponry, the police said they had to leave. A line of people with guns was wrapped around the church.
He and his team were about to close the event, then a black Suburban rolled up. When the trunk popped open, the pastor recalled, “there were guns everywhere.” He told him they didn’t have enough money for the weapons and would have to withdraw money from the bank.
“They said to me, ‘Pastor, we don’t need your $100. We want to know—can you get us a job?’” he said. “And I realized that the church had failed because we have really been putting a Band-Aid on an open-heart surgery issue.”
Panel 2: Weaponizing Cannabis to Justify Deadly Encounters and Victim-Blaming
The event’s second panel was moderated by David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition. The speakers discussed how the police and broader justice system use cannabis use by victims to justify their killers’ actions, including in the case of police killings, through both legal steps and stigmatization.
“I want to lift up the name of Ashanti Posey, a 17-year-old, Black LGBTQ activist who was shot and killed in April of last year,” Johns said at the beginning of the panel. “And there was a Tennessee lawmaker who blocked what would have been a resolution to honor her life and her work because she was allegedly involved in a low-level marijuana sale prior to being murdered.”
Niambe McIntosh said she and her family’s experience in that hospital in 2017 included bullying by correctional officers. Most other victims in the ICU who are serving time, they were told, weren’t allowed family visits. She said she believes they were able to see Jawara because Peter Tosh was a celebrity.
However, that relative privilege stemmed from the artist’s musicianship and cannabis advocacy that was in part rooted in his oppression. “He really made a point to consume cannabis no matter where he was, onstage, [at] a concert, Germany, in the U.S., in Canada,” McIntosh said of her father, who was murdered in a home invasion in 1987. “And you would think that he was doing it with ease. But the reality is that he was constantly targeted by the police.”
Screenshot of "Reimagining Justice" on Facebook Live
Niambe McIntosh
The police once dragged Tosh out of his home, beating him and breaking his ribs for smoking cannabis, McIntosh said.
And some of the people who incarcerate people for cannabis use use it too, as Tosh sang in his anthem “Legalize It.” He sang, “Doctors smoke it / Nurses smoke it / Judges smoke it / Even lawyer[s], too.”
Another panelist, Jasmine Rand, civil rights activist and attorney to Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown’s families, said that in both these high-profile cases and others of hers, cannabis found in the victims’ bodies was brought up by participants in the criminal justice system as an allegedly relevant point. “That makes the assumption that within our society, you can still weaponize a person’s character simply for their use of cannabis, even when cannabis now is legal in many states and legal in many countries,” she said. These things are also widely reported in the media.
Given this sordid history, the logical step for the media and cannabis industry is to speak loudly about the weaponization of cannabis, especially in this political moment, said panelist Rev. Mark Thompson, host of the “Make it Plain” Podcast.
“We can’t divorce Black Lives Matter and the deaths of people at the hands of the police from the weaponization of cannabis, and then therefore can’t divorce it from legalization,” Thompson said. “So, like I just did right there, we can talk about three things in one sentence.”
Panel 3: Fireside Chat: Reimagining Justice
Steven Hawkins, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, moderated the third session, featuring Ben Jealous, president and CEO of People for the American Way and who previously held those same titles for the NAACP, and Al Harrington, CEO of Viola Brands and former NBA player.
Black people are always upset about police brutality, Jealous said, but what sparked the recent massive uprisings in part are issues surrounding the coronavirus pandemic and recession—unemployment, joblessness, housing and healthcare. Also, knowing how easily communicable diseases can spread in prisons, criminal-justice reform needs to happen now. “The urgency for us to keep people out of jail needlessly has never been greater,” Jealous said.
Legalization will de-incentivize violent crime that occurs with gangs who operate in the black market, Jealous said. Despite medical cannabis legalization and relatively easy access in Maryland, where he lives (and where Bryant held his enormous gun buyback program), he said: “That trade has been used to fund sex trafficking and a whole bunch of other things that are far more horrible than cannabis consumption.”
In addition, he gave this perspective on rethinking justice.
“For me, reimagining justice means, at the end of the day, a much smaller criminal code and law enforcement that is there almost exclusively to deal with the most dangerous people in our society—because the flip side is the same communities that are terrorized by overaggressive policing, frankly, are also terrorized by some overaggressive, very violent people who seem to never quite get off of the street as fast as they should. And so, we need to, frankly, stop distracting police officers by making them be the social worker—well, then you can actually restrict them—and focus them on solving unsolved homicides, which are way too high in our communities.”
Harrington, for his part, knew the man whose murder by police has become a rallying cry behind America’s uprisings and pushes for massive societal change. George Floyd was very good friends with Stephen Jackson, another NBA player, who is in turn close with Harrington.
Screenshot of "Reimagining Justice" Facebook Live
Al Harrington
“There were times when I would go to Houston and different things like that, he’d pick us up from the airport, anything we needed while we were in town—he would run and go and get it for us,” Harrington said. “He was an unbelievable human being, and he did not deserve to be executed like that in the middle of the day with all those people watching.”
After recounting his own negative experiences with police, Harrington said: “Over the last, I guess, 6 to 8 years, police officers have been killing Black people on camera. I don’t know how much more evidence you need than a camera showing you what happened. And they still go to work the next day and different things like that.”
While Jackson’s fight is largely in the space of police injustice, Harrington says he has used his position as a former professional athlete and successful cannabis entrepreneur to advocate for economic empowerment in Black communities. “We control $1.7 trillion of money that’s circulated throughout this country, and right now, when a Black dollar comes into the community, it’s gone within 6 hours,” he said.
On that same topic, Harrington said children, for instance, shouldn’t just be given gifts like shoes but need a foundation and a structure to be as powerful as other races.
The day’s final panel, also moderated by Hawkins, featured guests in the law enforcement, religious and entertainment/cannabis industry spaces: Rachael Rollins, district attorney of Suffolk County, Mass.; actor Seth Rogen and his writing partner, Evan Goldberg, who run Houseplant, a cannabis brand that works with Canopy Growth; and Rev. Delman Coates, pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md. (Houseplant sponsored the entire event, along with Pax.)
Rollins, the first woman to hold her position and the first Black woman to serve as a district attorney in Massachusetts, said that although cannabis is “legal” in a number of states, it’s still criminalized.
She shared that Colorado issues charges for operating under the influence when drivers have 5 nanograms per millileter of cannabis in their blood. (The Denver Post referenced a Johns Hopkins University study that stated four puffs of 1.75%-THC cannabis equates to 57 nanograms per millileter.) Other states, like Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, where medical cannabis is legal, have a zero-tolerance policy. Meanwhile, Rollins said, the U.S. legal limit for alcohol is a 0.8% blood alcohol content. (The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission estimates that limit, depending on sex and body weight, equates to between two to four drinks containing 1.5 ounces of 80-proof liquor.)
Although Black people make up about 25% of people in Boston, vehicle stops of Black drivers account for 70% of total stops in the city. “Are we that bad at driving or is there something else afoot?” Rollins asks.
“I’m using my limited resources to solve, for me, 1,367 unsolved homicides in Boston,” she said. “Are you kidding me? If I have to ask, ‘Do I go to this family and say, “We’re going to try to solve your loved one’s murder from 18 years ago,” as opposed to kicking a door down to arresting your nephew for some marijuana-related crime,’ of course I’m going with the homicide.”
Rogen acknowledged that he and Goldberg have relative privilege, with the former saying he hasn’t had any issues with his public cannabis use, but he has Black friends who have.
Photo courtesy of "Reimagining Justice" Facebook Live
Seth Rogen
“I think one of the main things we’re doing is just trying to acknowledge reality and speak to that as much as we can, as people with loud voices, in that the war on drugs was racist, is racist, the only reason cannabis is illegal is for racist reasons and we have to acknowledge that and be aware of that,” he said.
Houseplant is working with National Expungement Week and Cage-Free Cannabis on expungement initiatives. Many people, Rogen said, often aren’t told they’re eligible for expungement.
“If your car has a problem, they call you and tell you, but if it turns out the thing that you have a criminal record for is no longer illegal/should have probably never been illegal in the first place, no one notifies you, which is just fundamentally wrong to us,” Rogen said.
Coates said Black faith leaders have historically opposed cannabis use and turned it into a moral issue, often not realizing how they have played into the narratives that Papillion talked about earlier in the day.
As Rogen said he has traveled the world and seen people enjoy and consume cannabis all over, Coates echoed a similar sentiment, saying “A lot of times, many people in our communities, including clergy, are doing these things in the privacy of their own homes, and so we just need to dispel these myths and really demythologize cannabis so that people don’t have to live in fear, so that people don’t have to have their lives ruined, and so that we can have a community of opportunity.”
A common thread throughout the event was how the cannabis industry profits while police continue to pull over people of color and throw them up against walls—as in a recent situation with Harrington, who was driving his Rolls Royce upon the stop in Beverly Hills. Per the event speakers, the drug laws that govern the U.S., rooted in the oppression and disenfranchisement of minority populations, continue to allow disproportionate arrests and incarceration, while people of can have their property and their families taken from them with impunity.
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Melissa Schiller
Patrick Williams
