By: Allessandra Inzinna

The War on Drugs has continued to leave deep scars on communities of color. Not only has the war devastated entire communities and disrupted the lives of millions of people, it also set the ball rolling on the War on Crime, which heavily assisted mass incarceration.

The destruction of these systematic attacks on people of color has trickled on a generation later; especially in the cannabis industry.

 The War on People of Color

White and black people smoke weed at extremely similar rates, which leaves little room for argument that the vast disparities in marijuana arrests have any other reason than racism.

Marijuana arrests increased from 2001 from 2010, making up over half (52%) of all drug arrests, according to the ACLU. This over-enthusiasm to lock up African-Americans found with weed spans across all regions of the “Land of the Free.” Wealthy communities, poor communities, rural communities, urban communities, communities with a lot of black people and communities with very little black people, all experience the racial divide in marijuana arrests.

The Nixon administration started the War on Drugs — more aptly, the War on Marijuana — in 1971 with the Controlled Substances Act. This highly criminalized weed so that police could ravage communities of color often against the Vietnam War. 

Its affects came down hard on black people in America and led to millions of lives thrown away in the legal system.

Mikelina Belaineh, the director of criminal law and policy at Last Prisoner Project, focuses on bringing restorative justice to the cannabis industry.

“It’s undisputed at this point that the War on Drugs was a manufactured war…

“I mean, based in racial bias, racial animus and really a desire to maintain social control over black and brown people who had gained some social and political empowerment after the Civil Rights Movement,” Belaineh said.

In the cannabis industry, these disparities are stark. While primarily white-male entrepreneurs profit off of the industry, primarily black and brown people sit in prison for possessing it. 

“You’ve got these two things that exist but cannot really coexist if we’re calling it a just society,” Belaineh said in reference to the cannabis industry. “People making billions of dollars and people [continuing] to suffer.”

A Whitewashed Industry

More than 80 percent of legal cannabis businesses have white ownership.  Women own only 26 percent of cannabis businesses, according to Marijuana Business Daily.

And while most industries have a similar disparity in ownership, marijuana’s history in the American criminal justice system makes it especially transparent.

There’s a whole host of roadblocks that bar people of color from getting started in the cannabis industry. For one, getting a foot in the door costs a small fortune, driven up by huge taxes, licensing fees causing many people to turn to business loans. Yet, less than 47 percent of black-owned business loan applications receive approval. Those that do get approval often receive less funds and higher interest rates than white business owners, according to Forbes.

This combines with the fact that many states bar drug-related convicts, who have largely and unjustly been black people, from working in the weed industry. 

“The cannabis industry is our best bet at reparations for these folks,” Belaineh said. “It’s a growing billion dollar industry and these are people who have suffered generations worth of trauma from an unjust war on it.”

Legalization Can’t Fix it Alone

While universal legalization on marijuana represents a huge first step, the current legalization process is not doing enough to remedy decades of mass incarceration imposed on communities of color. 

“Cannabis legalization in the cannabis industry is not something that has really benefited black and brown communities,” Belaineh said. “… We saw legalization happen in Massachusetts. … And nothing really changed for my guys, my community, my loved ones, because they were still getting arrested for small possession use values of weed.”

Belaineh notes that most of the legalization happening across America represents “white legalization,” or to the benefit of white folks. So, although weed arrests might decrease in areas with little prohibition, the racial disparities remain if not worsen. 

Full legalization, taking into account racial disparities and investing in communities affected as well as releasing any inmates on marijuanna-related arrests, may actually help remedy the problem. 

“The biggest thing we can do is full legalization because that would basically, it would close the front door to mass incarceration a good amount,” Belaineh said.

Cannabis is how the government tends to pull people of color into the legal system. When they get de-weaponized, they lose their primary tool.

Cannabis has a multi-faceted history in the U.S. It has simultaneously caused massive profits for some and untold suffering for others. Although recreational weed has become legal in 11 states and medicinally available in 33 states, the cannabis industry has a long road to racial equity.

“We’ve inherited this history,” Belaineh said. “But we’re here now, and we all have a moral obligation to figure out what our role is, especially in the cannabis community.”