In 2018, over 600,000 people in the United States
were charged for possessing marijuana.
Not for running some massive weed drug cartel.
For simply having it on them.
And despite making up only 31% of the population,
blacks and Latinos accounted
for nearly half of all weed arrests.
At the same time, the US cannabis industry
was and still is exploding.
And between 80% to 90% of the industry
is run by white owners.
So, not only are blacks and Latinos
more likely to get in trouble
for selling and having weed,
now that it's becoming legal,
they're nearly shut out of the industry.
Somewhere along the line,
legal weed became a rich white business.
So, how did this happen?
Cannabis' history of legality is deep-rooted in racism.
Back in the 1800s, the plant was used
for paper, textiles, and medicine.
But when Mexican migrants sought refuge
in the United States in the early 1900s,
they brought with them the practice
of smoking the plant, which they called marijuana.
A xenophobic campaign followed suit.
The Great Depression's widespread unemployment
heightened fears of Mexican immigrants,
and poor research linked cannabis
with violence and social deviance.
In 1936, a film titled "Reefer Madness"
depicted the drug as the cause of sexual assault,
murder, and basically complete teenage destruction.
Clip: Marijuana, the burning weed
with its roots in hell.
Narrator: In 1937, Federal Bureau of Narcotics
commissioner Harry Anslinger
brought forth the Marihuana Tax Act.
Yeah, he spelled it with an H.
He used unsupported claims to blame weed
for the cause of social destruction
and linked it with blacks and Latinos.
The 1951 Boggs Act created mandatory sentencing
for drug-related offenses.
Congress repealed them in 1970,
but Presidents Nixon and Reagan
reintroduced them in new ways
in the later '70s and '80s.
During those decades, minority communities
were hit extra hard by over-policing.
One of Nixon's top advisers admitted
that the war on drugs was a tactic
to bring down "the antiwar left and black people."
And heavy policing in minority communities
is still rampant.
Queen Adesuyi: We know that the case with Philando Castile,
part of the justification for the officer
claiming fear for his life
was because the car smelled like marijuana.
How can we in the same breath
bring forth an industry that's making
extremely wealthy white men more wealthy
without considering how we can repair those harms?
Narrator: Making matters worse,
people who've gone to prison for weed
are barred from selling it.
Even legally.
That's a huge problem for someone like Edward Forchion.
Edward Forchion: They're making it legal for corporations.
Guys like me, who went to prison for selling weed,
are watching as rich white guys
are now making millions doing
the exact same thing I went to prison for.
Narrator: Forchion has been a weed enthusiast for decades,
seeing its potential long before medical marijuana
became legal in New Jersey.
He's opened a weed-themed restaurant
with a smoke shop next door.
He also ran for the 2019 New Jersey State Assembly
under his self-made Legalize Marijuana Party.
He got 4.2% of the vote.
But he's been arrested for weed-related
offenses in the past.
Forchion: On November 24, 1997, I was arrested.
It was a first-degree charge for possession
with intent to distribute and conspiracy.
Narrator: He took a plea deal,
but he was facing 20 years.
Forchion: In 2010, I was convicted of simple possession.
And, normally, no one goes to prison
for simple possession, but I got nine months.
Narrator: Now that medical weed is legal in his state,
he's completely shut out of the business.
Forchion: So, Debbie Madaio's my partner.
Debbie, she has no felonies, I have a felony.
Debbie could probably go through the process
to get ownership, but just my name,
just the fact that I would be on the paperwork,
would invalidate her application.
Just the fact that I'm a felon,
I can't be on the paperwork.
Narrator: In other words,
if his name can't be on the dispensary paperwork,
he wouldn't have official ownership.
In protest, Forchion is selling cannabis illegally
out of his adjacent smoke shop,
which is right across the street from City Hall.
He's using the hashtag #SellingWeedLikeImWhite,
practically daring the city to arrest him.
Forchion: You know, you can't change laws or move the line
without stepping over the line.
I'm a big believer in civil disobedience.
I welcome whatever challenge the state
comes at me with.
Narrator: But what about states
that are more weed-friendly, like Colorado?
They legalized recreational marijuana in 2014,
and by 2017, they passed a law that made it possible
for felons with marijuana convictions
to get their records cleared.
That's great, right?
Turns out getting the record scrubbed clean
isn't as simple as it seems,
and that's something dispensary owner
Wanda James knows all about.
Wanda James: For us, it became more of a
political statement.
There have been members of my family
that have been arrested.
My brother did 10 years because of
a small amount of cannabis, 4 ounces,
and for that he ended up picking cotton
every day for four years in Texas.
This was shocking to me when I learned this.
While we've always known it was illegal,
I'd never known that it was punitive.
In other words, everybody that I've ever known
that's been caught here in Colorado, i.e. white folks,
it's been mostly, "Give us that,
we're gonna throw it away," you know,
"Don't let me catch you smoking pot anymore."
You know, it's always been a warning.
Narrator: The shock of her brother's
arrest and sentencing inspired her
not only to open a dispensary,
but to help other minorities trying
to break into the business.
Out of the over 2,000 licensed dispensaries in Colorado,
James estimates that less than 20
are owned by blacks and Latinos.
And, as the first African American
to own a dispensary in the state,
James says one of the biggest roadblocks
is getting weed convictions cleared.
In 2017, Colorado passed a bill
that could seal records of misdemeanor cannabis use
and possession convictions.
But sealing the records wouldn't completely erase them.
It would just make them unavailable to the public.
In other words, a potential employer
could see that you were convicted of a misdemeanor
but wouldn't know why.
Colorado's Turn Over a New Leaf Program
allows those with past convictions
to apply to have their records vacated,
which would dismiss the charges and seal the record.
But Colorado's processes are in no way automatic.
Out of the 17,000 people eligible,
only 71 people have cleared their records
as of October 2019.
The process requires digging into all of your records,
which can be difficult to track down.
Not to mention, any cases that don't
specifically consist of marijuana charges
would be ineligible.
So, if your charge is for drug paraphernalia possession
and you can't find the record that says
"marijuana" paraphernalia possession,
the record itself would be unclear
and you could have a hard time
getting the record erased.
Adesuyi: The biggest issues faced by people of color
in the industry is that when people
are rolling back prohibition,
there hasn't been a focus on censoring
of communities most impacted.
James: All of those people that want
to have their records expunged or sealed
have to go through a process to do so.
You have to hire an attorney;
you have to meet with the AG
of the state that you are in
to see if they will seal or expunge your record.
Narrator: Legal fees are just one
of the many costs associated
with starting a legal cannabis business.
For communities that haven't benefited
from generational wealth and support,
securing the necessary capital is difficult.
Throughout American history,
minority communities have been heavily policed,
denied equal pay and job opportunities,
forced into neighborhoods through redlining,
and then forced out of those
same neighborhoods through gentrification.
Amber Littlejohn: What we see as the biggest stumbling block
is actually access to capital
and necessary to fund the exorbitant costs
of participating in this industry.
Narrator: Since weed is still illegal
on the federal level, prospective dispensary owners
can't get a bank loan to open a business.
Meanwhile, big hedge funds have been investing
in weed since before it was even officially legal.
And this has set up the biggest players
in the game for success.
Take MedMen, for instance.
MedMen is a high-end dispensary
operating mainly out of California,
where recreational cannabis is legal.
It prides itself on basically being
the Apple store of weed.
Attentive staff, sleek paraphernalia,
glass display cases, and a superhigh price tag.
MedMen was founded back in 2010,
eight years before California allowed
licensed shops to sell recreational weed.
Before the company went public,
it made $110 million in private placement investments.
When profits dipped because of high taxes
and dispensary restrictions,
it was able to secure a $100 million loan
from a cannabis-focused investment company.
Today, the $1.6 billion company
is continuing to expand at rates
faster than the legal system.
Out of the six states it has offices in,
only three of those states have made
recreational cannabis legal.
If we look at small minority businesses as a whole,
they're statistically less likely
to receive investments.
Out of all venture-capital-backed businesses in the US,
only 1% were black-owned
and 1.8% were Latino owned.
This makes it hard for owners
to hire more employees, expand,
or deal with unexpected profit losses.
For the weed industry, charges pile up
long before you're even approved for a license.
By the time your application goes through,
you're looking at costs within the millions.
Littlejohn: Starting simply from the point of application,
we have some states where the application fees
themselves, for a single facility,
are tens of thousands of dollars.
Now, that doesn't include the additional
capitalization requirements that many states have
that can enter into hundreds of thousands of dollars
per location and per license.
James: When you're giving out less than 60 licenses
in a state or five licenses in a state,
it's going to cost you anywhere between $50,000
and $250,000 to have a technical writer
write your application for you.
Narrator: While the application is processing,
you're also required to either own
or rent a commercial property.
This means, for the time it takes for you
to get approved, you're paying rent or mortgage
on a space you can't even legally use for profit yet.
Littlejohn: I talked to a woman who lost her home
because she was trying to finance her cannabis business
and had to wait so long.
Narrator: Current owners, activists, and nonprofits
are working to eliminate these roadblocks.
But it all starts with people in communities of color
at the forefront of policy change.
James: The reason why it's extremely important
that we have black and brown ownership
is because this industry was built on our back.
So when you have 800,000 arrests a year
and 85% of them were black and brown
and we were targeted by police departments
to work in privatized prison systems as slave labor,
we are owed these licenses.
We are owed the opportunity to be owners
in this industry.
And states need to make that so.