Cannabis has emerged as a racial justice issue for Black
people in America, and it makes sense. After
years of atrocious marijuana policies that
criminalized and incarcerated Black
communities, it only makes sense that the
victims of unjust drug laws should now benefit
in the form of reparations. This is where
society has an opportunity to right the racial
wrongs of history as America charts a new path
towards drug reform.
Emerging business initiatives from some Native
American tribes in the marijuana industry show the potential
economic benefits for Black people. For
example, the Shinnecock
Indian Nation and other indigenous communities are forming
partnerships and reactivating ancient trade
routes to manufacture cannabis and hemp
products based on the traditional medicine of
their ancestors. This, as the Mohawk Nation
and Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes have dedicated
500,000 acres of land to cultivate cannabis,
partnering with the Cherokee Nation for an
online marketplace.
The question is whether marijuana legalization and
taxation could become an economic development
pathway for Black people, in the manner that
Native American nations are making it work for
them. Perhaps cannabis could even become for
Black folks what casinos are for Native
Americans.
Cannabis-related taxation and revenue has emerged as part
of the debate on reparations policy. For
example, the city of Evanston,
Illinois is the first in the nation to create a reparations
fund from the sale of legal recreational
marijuana products. This fund will allocate $10
million over 10 years, and providing cash payments to direct descendants of
Black Evanston residents from 1919 to 1969 who
experienced racist housing discrimination.
Recipients who qualify for the program must
use the funds for home down payments, mortgage
payments or home repairs. This restorative
housing program is a start - though perhaps a
drop in the bucket - and only scratches the
surface in terms of the reparative economic
justice and business development initiatives
that could benefit the Black community. New
York is considering marijuana
regulation and taxation to fund social equity and economic development
programs, and Oregon will provide reparations
payments to people convicted of
marijuana-related offenses over the past 10
years.
In many ways, the public policy debate over weed has come
full circle. As pot legalization has become a
reality in a number of states, exploring how
the Black community should benefit from
cannabis is timely, considering that marijuana
laws have criminalized the Black community for
years and helped fuel mass incarceration. The
historical prohibitions on marijuana in the
U.S. were racialized from the start. The war
on marijuana was designed to block
immigrants from Mexico.
“There are 100,000 total marijuana
smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes,
Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their
Satanic music, jazz and swing result from
marijuana use. This marijuana causes white
women to seek sexual relations with Negroes,
entertainers and any others,” said Harry
Anslinger, the first commissioner of the Federal Bureau of
Narcotics, the predecessor to the Drug
Enforcement Administration. Anslinger believed
cracking down on marijuana was a top priority
because of its “effect on the degenerate
races.” “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as
good as white men,” he added.
Anslinger’s racist attitudes never went away, and
marijuana prohibition swept up Black and Brown
communities with the war on drugs, draconian
drug laws and mass incarceration - which
disappeared a whole generation of Black
people. But now, we have an opportunity to
change direction and repair the damage that
was done to the enslaved and their
descendants.
