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Those of us who take pleasure in consuming cannabis owe a big debt to those in the Black community who kept the grass flowing so we could get stoned. Due to the criminalization of weed, Black people and other people of color have routinely paid a heavier price for their participation in cannabis culture and commerce. Cannabis laws were—and are—used to disproportionately arrest and imprison Black people. This has been going on for 100 years in America.
Former NBA star and current cannabis entrepreneur Al Harrington put it to me plainly.
“Cannabis prohibition was used to destroy the Black community,” he says, repeating the sentence to make sure I really heard. The word destroy resonates in my mind like a silent scream. Harrington is right. It’s a painful truth. One thing consumers can do to right that historical wrong is to give their cannabis dollars to Black-owned businesses.
Ten years ago Harrington co-founded cannabis brand Viola, a premium pre-roll and flower company named after his grandmother, who found that cannabis brought her relief from glaucoma. As CEO, Harrington is bringing more than pain relief and pleasure to the masses; Viola has committed to help minorities work toward ownership in cannabis, to assist license applicants as they navigate the complex process and to reinvest in community via projects such as food drives.
The very people who have borne the brunt of prohibition are now missing out on the massive cannabis boom.
Steps like these are called social-equity measures, and they’re intended as a way to help correct systemic injustice: The very people who have borne the brunt of prohibition—people of color and low-income community members—are now missing out on the massive cannabis boom. The business world of legal cannabis is currently overwhelmingly white; for entrepreneurs of color, barriers to entry can include lack of access to capital, existing cannabis convictions and predatory partners who seek to take advantage of social-equity licensees.
This imbalance of opportunity is one of the reasons it’s so important for individual consumers to support Black-owned weed companies. We have a long way to go, but hope is building.
People of color have about 19 percent ownership in the weed industry as a whole, with Black ownership at approximately 4 percent. Black-owned cannabis is available across North America. There are Black-owned dispensaries from Boston to Palm Desert to Toronto, as well as Black-owned businesses all the way up the supply chain, be they THC cultivators, hemp growers, CBD brands or manufacturers.
You may be wondering where you can find these products. The good folks at Cannaclusive and ALMOSTCONSULTING make it easy with their InclusiveBase, which helps consumers locate Black-, Latin- and woman-owned businesses. Another wonderful resource is Emerald’s “Conscious Consumption” list. (Over the past year, your Dope Tutor has sampled and enjoyed dozens of products thanks to these guides.) On your hunt for Black-owned cannabis, Google is your friend, and so is Instagram.
“When you buy cannabis from a Black-owned dispensary, you’re helping to build generational wealth for people whose families have been destroyed by the war on drugs,” says Angela White. White is the equity for industry program manager at San Francisco’s Success Centers, an organization that, among other things, helps people harmed by the war on drugs enter the legal cannabis industry. “It’s hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you’ve never had any boots, only knees on the neck.”
When you buy cannabis from a Black-owned dispensary, you’re helping to build generational wealth for people whose families have been destroyed by the war on drugs.
Other outfits exist to nurture and educate aspiring entrepreneurs in the Black community and to help them enter the cannabis industry, including Hood Incubator in Oakland, California and Budding Solutions in Baltimore, Maryland.
Black ownership of cannabis businesses will grow as these programs bear fruit and investors, including athletes and celebrities, expand their reach into the industry. Jay-Z, for example, has a new flower brand called Monogram. He’s also giving back by launching a $10 million venture fund that will contribute a portion of its net income “to invest in minority-owned and Black-owned cannabis businesses and contribute to the effort to rectify the wrongs of prohibition.” This is important because it addresses a massive hurdle to entry in the cannabis industry: access to capital.
More and more capital should soon be flowing into the hands of Black businesses. Activists have done an outstanding job ensuring social-equity licenses are available to people of color in many legal states, and that effort must continue. If so, investors will have little choice but to invest in the Black community if they want to be in this business. This will allow Black entrepreneurs to open their doors to you, the customer; it’s at that moment that you can activate your moral compass and be part of the solution.
Buy Black-owned weed for your next purchase and you’ll be part of starting to right the wrongs of the past, while getting some very fine ganja at the same time. That seems like a wonderful way to celebrate Black History Month to me. Just make sure to carry your celebration—and your support of Black-owned businesses—throughout the rest of the year too.