Looking back on covering legalization and its evolving cannabis culture for the last three years, it’s tough to choose a single anecdote that best illustrates why I do so much cringing behind the scenes.

Would it be the summer of 2018, as new weed brands were launching with the assistance of an all-white Bob Marley cover band? Or the racist and repugnant “Once you go BLK you never go back” booth at the Lift & Co. conference just last winter? Is it the new cannabis store in my own neighbourhood, cluelessly called “Hobo,” that’s opening just a few doors from SisteringTO, a precious 24-hour drop-in centre for women, many of whom are people of colour?

When it’s convenient and potentially profitable, Canadian cannabis loves to borrow from Black culture to sell weed. Corporate cannabis works with artists like Drake and Snoop Dogg, eager to access their fan bases and the culture, despite not having an authentic connection to it. Press releases brag about “Jamaican” cannabis owned by North American shareholders, seemingly ignorant of the colonial history of the island or the persecution of the Rastafarians who used it.

A visit to a single cannabis industry conference is a good indicator as to why. White-washed, mostly male boards and countless pay-to-play panels lazily neglect to include diverse voices are a signal that perhaps the first few years of legalization weren’t about building a more equitable post-prohibition world. Looking back, so much of the hype around undoing the wrongs of the past and building a better future was about pumping stock prices and cashing out before things turned sour.

So, am I surprised that the most vocal brands expressing support for Black Lives Matter aren’t the brands founded by former police? From where I’m sitting, the most vocal companies on social media thus far are those led by people of colour, have strong ties to the Cannabis Amnesty initiative, or have corporate responsibility departments headed up by people of colour.

Black members of the industry are still doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to reckoning with industry inequities, cultural appropriation and unjust policing and sentencing. In a powerful piece published on Medium, Ika Washington, founder of DiversityTalk, and a former cannabis conference organizer and industry veteran, calls the silence or weak responses from cannabis brands deafening.

“The cannabis industry was built off the backs of Blacks and people of colour,” she writes. “We are stigmatized and we continue to be stigmatized inside and outside of these unsafe spaces.”

Washington’s piece is a must-read for anyone who consumes, sells and/or invests in weed — anyone who doesn’t understand the deep connections between the current state of legalized cannabis and the brave political actions of Black Lives Matter protests in the face of undeniable police brutality. If you work at a cannabis company, I recommend you share it with your customers and employees to educate them about why this industry is so deeply connected to this fraught historical moment.

I’m not surprised, but I am ashamed that when issues of race arise, rather than doing the heavy-lifting, predominantly white communities look to individuals like Washington — who we should be thankful haven’t left in frustration — to lead the way, educate and coach.

“It does take a toll on you emotionally, mentally, physically — it does,” Washington told me on the phone this morning. “But if I don’t stand up, then nothing changes. If I don’t speak, other people are going to feel the same way or other people are going to have these problems and not know how to say it. I will call companies out. I will call people out for their actions. I just don’t believe in standing silent at all.”