Rigged Game: Inequality on the Rise in Legal Pot Industry
How people of color are blocked from Washington’s legal pot marketplace.
One of the major campaign promises of cannabis legalization was to begin undoing some of the damage of the War on Drugs in minority communities. But while the new recreational market has reduced cannabis-related arrests, it hasn’t created wealth in those communities. White people are getting rich off the "Green Rush," while minorities are often shut out.
Bill Piper, Senior Director of National Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, believes the legal cannabis industry is hurtling toward racial stratification, noting that only about 1 percent of dispensaries nationwide are owned by people of color.
“One of the things I worry about is that there’s essentially two markets,” Piper wrote in a recent article. “One market is the legal market which is really, really, really hard to get into, and then there’s the illicit market which has existed...
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