It is painfully evident when you look at the average stand, speaker, and sponsors of the various cannabis expos and tradeshows emerging worldwide.

The problem becomes even more glaringly obvious when you look at the net worth, race, and gender of the CEOs and board members of the most significant cannabis companies in the worlds' legal markets. I am eluding here is systemic inequality and the absence of socio-economically disadvantaged, ethnic and racial minority, and diverse gender representation and ownership within the "legal" cannabis industry.

To help give you an idea of what I am on about, let's look at the US, where this problem seems most prevalent. However, I imagine some will argue that they are currently the largest 'developed' cannabis market. After all, citizens living in 19 US states plus Washington D.C and Guam now have access to a legal adult-use cannabis market. So, there are bound to be some blind spots and oversight as the industry evolves and grows, right?

Teething problems were bound to have happened; there is still no denying the consequences and legacy of racism and classism present within the modern 'legal' cannabis industry. Black American's make up around 13% of the national population, yet they only make up 1.2 – 1.7% of cannabis company owners, according to the 2021 Leafy Jobs Report1. The absence of minority participation and ownership is no more evident than in Illinois, home of America's third-largest city, Chicago.

The Midwestern state's most populous city has a black population of around 30%, and at least a dozen or so cannabis dispensaries, yet not one is minority-owned. It gets worse when you look at the state as a whole. Despite 'legalizing' cannabis back in 2019, thus tripling its fledgling 2020 sales to over a billion dollars, there is still no single minority-owned business. ¹

Under-representation is a massive problem for other ethnic and racial groups in the US, including Indigenous, Pacific Islanders, Asian, Latino, and Hispanic Americans. The share of minorities at cannabis companies in executive positions largely dropped from 28% in 2019 to 13.1% in 20211. Although this brings it in line with the national average across the broader US economy, it still represents a failure to empower and enable those most harmed by cannabis prohibition to profit from its updated legal status.

Canada is another prime example of this kind of under-representation. A 2020 policy brief by the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation and the University of Toronto2 found that Canadian cannabis company board rooms were 84% white and 86%, male. As these statistics highlight, there isn't just a racial and ethnic bias in the industry, and there is also a gender one. The share of women in senior executive positions reduced from 36.8% in 2019 to 22.1% in 2021, falling short of the US national average of 29.8% across other industries. ²

So, what is preventing minority participation and ownership in the cannabis industry? It has a lot to do with historical prejudice, discrimination, and intolerances manifest within the modern enterprise. They arise through placatory and woefully inadequate social equity programs, restrictive and costly licenses and permits, and a veritable minefield of other arbitrary

socio-economic constraints and obstacles.

Whether these inherent restrictions are designed to make entering the industry more difficult for certain socio-economic, racial, and ethnic groups or more accessible for others is still up for debate. However, what isn't is their real-world consequences and the inherent biases, blind spots, and barriers to entry they create. It has resulted in the biggest North American cannabis boardrooms looking more like a 1970s DARE meeting than a diverse twentieth-century company representative of the heterogeneous multicultural populations of the North American continent.

Economists and industry insiders are putting down this edging out of minorities and women to the market entry of white businessmen from other well-established industries. As cannabis gains legitimacy and social acceptance, it attracts businessmen from other hyper-competitive and highly profitable enterprises. Their prior business experience and expertise, professional networks and connections, along with their 'established access to capital' provide them myriad inherent advantages. This competitive edge makes it rather difficult to level the playing field and provide meaningful equity and restitution for the many victims of cannabis prohibition.

Data from the 2021 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) highlights that the median wealth for white American families is $184,000 compared to just $23,000 for black American families and $38,000 for Hispanic American families ³.  This dramatic wealth gap is one of the most significant single impediments to minority ownership and meaningful participation in the modern cannabis industry.

The lack of start-up capital to afford the exorbitant license fees and permits necessary to enter the market leaves individuals from disproportionately affected communities and racial/ethnic minorities that typically have less liquidity reliant on overly restrictive and complex social equity licensing lotteries and loan schemes.

Unfortunately, these schemes are not a guarantee of success. They still do not level the playing field compared to multinational corporations' financial clout and influence,

venture-capital-backed investment vehicles, and SPACs (Special-Purpose Acquisition Companies). Just look at Oakland in California, where around 40% of the city's 59 social equity licensees are now at risk of defaulting on their social equity licensee loan. ⁴

Cannabis social equity programs are made up of three primary parts designed to cultivate equity in the industry.

1. Priority licensing
2. Expungement of low-level convictions
3. Utilizing cannabis tax revenue to fund community-development programs in neighborhoods and communities disproportionately affected by the legacy of cannabis prohibition.

13 of the 19 'legal' adult consumption states have a social equity program in place. However, even if a candidate is lucky enough to qualify for these programs, navigating the ever-changing legal weed landscape is an expensive endeavor.

The intended recipients of these social equity programs don't or cannot qualify for the hand-up these schemes offer to provide. For example, it could be a cannabis conviction for possession over the arbitrary low qualifying limit for expungement or having other aggravating convictions and socio-economic factors that prevent their participation in the industry.

This current over-corporatized profit-centric boy club allows for the continued control and exploitation of the same marginalized communities and individuals once criminalized through prohibition, now made into cash cows for 'big weed' to milk dry. The same communities discriminated against, impoverished, and terrorized by decades of archaic and failed prohibitive policies are now buying their weed from companies that don't reinvest the profit back into those areas. At least during prohibition, most of the money spent on cannabis remained in the community and helped retain liquidity in the local economy.

As is evident in the data above, the current predicted trajectory of the cannabis industry appears to bend solely towards the benefit and interests of powerful multinational conglomerates, venture capitalists, and former prohibitionists. The same cabal of individuals is responsible for decades of disaster capitalism, rampant wealth inequality, global ecocide, boom and bust economics.

If left unabated, their consolidation of control, influence, and ownership have the potential to negate one of the most critical socio-economic impacts of finally ending cannabis prohibition, the creation of a fundamentally fairer society.

Cannabis consumers and other individuals involved in or connected to cannabis culture during its prohibition should be amongst the first to benefit from the cessation of its criminalization, not corporations. Then those individuals who faced collateral criminalization, socio-economic exclusion, professional persecution, and myriad forms of other discrimination due to ethnicity, race, geographical location, or personal association to over-policed and criminalized communities.

There is only really one way to truly make right the wrongs of prohibition. That is to ensure the same culture, artistic forms of expression, emblems, knowledge, lexicon, and mannerisms that have for decades seen its purveyor persecuted, not stolen from them. They shouldn't be extorted and exploited by the co-option, gentrification, and whitewashing of their culture by selling it back to them at an inflated rate in non-recyclable plastic packaging. They shouldn't have to buy back a culture that is rightfully theirs. The end of cannabis prohibition shouldn't fuel the machinery of our future indentured servitude, and it should smash it.

Without shared ownership, community-led business ventures, minority profit participation, and some form of wider fiscal reparations to those communities whose members' lives were lessened, constrained, and cut short by cannabis prohibition. Then this incarnation of 'legalization' will only further exploit the people it proclaims to empower and enrich the same small group of individuals who've owned and operated our planet for generations.

Nothing meaningful will change, the rich will get richer, and the poor will get poorer. And humanity will have missed its greatest hope at tackling our crippling dependency on fossil fuels, the looming energy and water crisis, cataclysmic climate change, record wealth inequality, and resource scarcity.

Why should the same individuals who likely voted in favor of mandatory minimums, harsher sentences, and other archaic prohibitionist policies be the same to profit from their dissolution? Should they be allowed to build brand empires and multinational corporations that trade in a culture that just a few years ago, they would have been happy to see continue criminalized?

Don't get me wrong; some fantastic projects honor the history, heritage, and culture that built the modern cannabis industry. 'Evidence' is a Californian cannabis brand. It grows in a former prison and donates a dollar from every bag sold to The Last Prisoner Project dedicated to freeing all US cannabis prisoners.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the other companies in the industry are not in it for a love of the plant, a passion for the culture, or a sincere desire to see 'legalization' that cultivates social justice/equity profit participation and adequate community reparations. Their motives are far more straightforward and narrow-minded. They are only interested in the continued exploitation of the cannabis culture, consolidation of power, and getting rich in an emerging industry.

This current overly homogenized, standardized, and profit-driven system promotes corporate favoritism, classist elitism, and rampant cronyism. The consequences of giving one group the keys to the canna-kingdom while tying up the rest in red tape and bureaucracy ensure the flourishing of a criminalized and unregulated market.

The above creates a severe lack of dissent, ideological variance, lost knowledge, criminalized expertise, and a loss of cultural and corporate diversity in the cannabis industry. Ultimately, it is the birthright of every human being to develop a personal, intimate relationship with cannabis.

Our history teaches us that we will only be heeded when we first acknowledge, honor, and compensate the victims of cannabis prohibition. It's achievable by simply realizing and recognizing that the cumulative sacrifices of all those who came before us give us everything we potentially have ahead of us.

1. https://leafly-cms-production.imgix.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/13180206/Leafly-JobsReport-2021-v14.pdf
2. https://cdpe.org/publication/how-diverse-is-canadas-legal-cannabis-industry-examining-race-and-gender-of-its-executives-and-directors/
3. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2021/january/wealth-gaps-white-black-hispanic-families-2019
4. https://mjbizdaily.com/oakland-sends-social-equity-marijuana-licensees-to-collections-over-unpaid-loans