By Jennifer Peltz / Associated Press
NEW YORK — Advocates for legalizing marijuana have long argued it would strike a blow for social justice after a decades-long drug war that disproportionately targeted minority and poor communities.
But social equity has been both a sticking point and selling point this year in New York and New Jersey, among other states weighing whether to join the 10 that allow recreational use of pot.
Complicating the law-making process, sometimes even among supporters, are questions about how best to erase marijuana convictions and ensure that people who were arrested for pot benefit from legal marijuana markets.
Advocates say legalization elsewhere hasn’t done enough to achieve those goals. Critics maintain legal pot is even accelerating inequality as the drug becomes big business for companies generally run by white men.
“We’re at the stage of marijuana reform 2.0,” said Douglas Berman, an Ohio State University law professor who follows marijuana policy. The conversation, he said, has shifted from just being about legalization to, “which track should we make sure we head down?”
Questions about conviction-clearing and other issues contributed to delaying legislative votes on legalizing recreational pot that had been expected earlier this spring in New York and New Jersey . The states’ Democratic governors and legislative leaders support legalization but confronted differences even within their own party.
The New Jersey measure fizzled this week, when the state Senate president said he’ll aim for a 2020 referendum while pursuing separate legislation to expand medical marijuana and expunge low-level pot convictions.
Meanwhile, some New York lawmakers said they’ll soon unveil an updated proposal to legalize pot and foster racial and economic equity. Activists remain hopeful the state can set an example.
“Social justice is what’s going to propel us, not what’s going to hold us back,” said Kassandra Frederique, the New York director for the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance.
Federal data shows similar percentages of white and black people use marijuana. But the arrest rate for blacks is higher, according to reports by the American Civil Liberties Union and others.
Legalization of recreational pot in 10 states and the District of Columbia, and medical pot in two-thirds of the states, hasn’t eliminated the gaps. In Colorado, for instance, a state report found arrests were fewer but the rate remained higher among blacks five years after a 2012 vote for legalization.
Meanwhile, the emerging marijuana industry is very white, according to the limited data available.
“It’s obviously a problem,” said Morgan Fox of the National Cannabis Industry Association, which has helped craft suggestions for social equity legislation.
Another industry group, the Cannabis Trade Federation, this week announced plans to craft a diversity and equity policy in conjunction with national NAACP officials and other civil-rights advocates.
Some would-be minority entrepreneurs have been caught in a cannabis Catch-22, unable to work in a legal pot business because of a past conviction. Others struggle to raise start-up money in an expensive industry that banks are leery about entering because of the federal government’s prohibition on pot.
“We’re not going to have much time to make a space in the market for ourselves,” said Jason Ortiz, vice president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.
Marijuana got Ortiz arrested as a teenager, but now he hopes to start a business if recreational pot becomes legal in Connecticut, where he lives.
Some states and cities have started post-legalization initiatives to expunge criminal records and open doors in the cannabis business for people with pot convictions. California, for instance, passed a sweeping expungement law last year affecting hundreds of thousands of drug offenders.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has proposed a national legalization measure that includes expungements and a community “reinvestment” fund, and several of his fellow Democratic senators and 2020 presidential primary contenders have signed on .
Some veterans of early state legalization campaigns have reckoned with their limitations.
“We were overly cautious at the time, looking back,” said Art Way, the Drug Policy Alliance’s director in Colorado. “But it didn’t feel that way” when legalizing marijuana and ending many arrests were unprecedented goals in themselves.
He’s been fighting to make Colorado’s cannabis industry more accessible to people with drug convictions and entrepreneurs of modest means.
Opponents, too, are looking at how legalization has played out. They say it shows authorizing pot is no way to help minorities.
“The social justice issue is a big front” for states and big business to make money off marijuana, said New Jersey Legislative Black Caucus Chairman Ronald Rice, a Democratic senator from Newark and former police officer. He supports ending criminal penalties for marijuana but not legalizing recreational use.
“I know what social justice looks like,” Rice says. “I also know when people are being used.”
He doesn’t foresee pot shops enhancing neighborhoods where drugs have been a wellspring of problems. And he’s skeptical that, even with special incentives, residents would reap the profits in an industry already infused with big money.
New York Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes agrees legalizing marijuana isn’t a panacea for minority communities. But the Assembly’s first African-American majority leader is championing a recreational-pot proposal that’s currently being revised.
“It will not end racism. But it is a crucial step in the right direction,” Peoples-Stokes, a Buffalo Democrat, recently wrote in Newsweek.
As an aspiring marijuana businessman in New York, Andrew Farrior is following the legalization debate and its talk of social equity.
Farrior, who is black, is intrigued by the possibility of incentives for entrepreneurs like him but not confident such plans would translate into action. Meanwhile, he and co-founder Ethan Jackson are plowing ahead with plans to launch Greenbox.NYC as a subscription and delivery business for hemp and other legal cannabis-related products.
“We’re ready to take what the market gives us,” Farrior said.
A look at efforts to make legal pot foster social justice
Questions about marijuana and social justice have played a prominent role this year in several U.S. states’ debates about pot legalization. But other states and cities where recreational or medical marijuana already is legal have also endeavored to make up for the consequences and racial disparities of decades of policing pot.
Efforts have included clearing convictions; trying to carve out a place in the burgeoning cannabis business for minorities, the poor and people with past pot arrests; and channeling pot tax money to communities where arrests were prevalent.
Results have been mixed, fueling arguments from legalization proponents who want new campaigns to do more to combat social inequity and from critics who say legalization only makes it worse.
A look at some initiatives around the country:
CALIFORNIA
When voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2016, they also invited people to petition to have old pot convictions expunged or reduced. But relatively few people went through the expense and time.
Some prosecutors tossed out or reduced thousands of convictions en masse, but many others said they didn’t have the resources to identify eligible cases.
Aiming to galvanize the process, lawmakers last year required state justice officials to identify an estimated 220,000 cases statewide by this July. Meanwhile, some local prosecutors have been using technology to pinpoint and dismiss cases.
Some California cities are attempting to promote opportunity for people who were most affected by pot enforcement — for example, by setting aside some marijuana licenses for poor residents with pot convictions and pairing them up with other companies for financial help.
A 2018 state law provides $10 million for local efforts to help such entrepreneurs. But some activists and applicants say programs have been slow-moving and partnerships problematic.
COLORADO
Colorado was one of the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana, and advocates say automatic expungements and other social justice provisions seemed like too much to add to the already pioneering 2012 referendum.
But equity concerns have simmered since legalization — a state report last year found marijuana arrest rates remained higher among blacks than whites, and state and city officials have made some efforts to address the issues.
A 2017 state law lets people ask courts to wipe pot offenses off their records, and a new Denver program aims to make that process easier with an online form. A proposal to make it easier for people with drug convictions to get into the cannabis industry passed the state legislature this spring and is awaiting action from Democratic Gov. Jared Polis.
MARYLAND
Maryland’s 2013 medical marijuana law required regulators to seek “racial, ethnic and geographical diversity” in awarding licenses. But no black-owned companies were selected for any of the initial 15 growers’ licenses in a state where about one in three residents are black.
After lawsuits and a couple of rounds of legislative effort, a 2018 state law added licenses in hopes of diversifying the industry.
MASSACHUSETTS
Massachusetts’ 2016 recreational pot ballot initiative specifically called for policies to get people “disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement” involved in the legal cannabis industry.
Regulators gave licensing-review priority to black- or Hispanic-owned businesses and aspiring marijuana entrepreneurs from certain areas, among other provisions. Some cities have their own social equity programs.
Still, about 2% of approved licensees statewide so far are minority-owned businesses, though minorities make up as many as 27% when prospective staffers, executives and board members are counted, according to state statistics . License applications are pending from several more minority-owned and “economic empowerment” businesses.
Meanwhile, a 2018 state law allows for expungement of small-scale marijuana possession convictions and some others.
MICHIGAN
When voters last year made Michigan the first Midwestern state to legalize recreational marijuana, they told regulators to “positively impact” communities where pot enforcement was intense and encourage their residents to participate in the pot business. Officials are working out the details of what that will mean.
OREGON
Portland voters who approved a city marijuana sales tax in 2016 aimed to devote proceeds partly to small businesses — especially minority- and women-owned businesses — and economic and education programs in communities where pot was heavily policed.
A city auditor’s report this month found 16% of the over $8 million tax haul so far has gone to those purposes. About 80% has gone to traffic safety initiatives, and the rest mainly to services for drug and alcohol users.
“The limited money to address the historical effects of cannabis prohibition may not be” what voters who backed the tax expected, the auditors wrote.
WASHINGTON
More than five years after Washington state legalized marijuana, Seattle officials last year began moving to clear past pot possession misdemeanor convictions automatically, without defendants having to request it. The city estimated up to 600 cases, going back to 1997, would qualify.
This week, Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed statewide legislation requiring judges to grant requests to erase many misdemeanor marijuana possession cases that predate legalization. Inslee in January announced a streamlined pardon process for small-time pot convictions, but his initiative had stricter eligibility requirements than the new law.
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