How Legal Marijuana Can Positively Impact People of Color
From providing community health & social benefits to creating immense revenue for state governments, one topic is rising to the forefront of the cannabis legalization dialogue– that the legalization of cannabis can be a significant force in contemporary strides toward racial justice in America.
To understand how we see this in effect today, we have to understand the history of cannabis prohibition in the United States, or more specifically, in California. The California gold rush brought a massive influx of Chinese and Mexican immigrants to the country, much to the dismay of the hegemonic forces who were driven into a panic much like contemporary replacement theory. With this, there were a rash of anti-immigrant and anti-immigration laws passed on both the state and federal level.
These laws included specific prohibitions on cultural behaviors– such as a 1870 San Francisco ordinance making it illegal for workers to carry water suspended by a pole. While such laws were discriminatory, not all such class violence was so banal. Forced deportations of immigrants such as the Bisbee Incident where over a thousand Mexican mine workers on strike were kidnapped and left in the desert by government forces.
Thus, by the time that the “Marihuana Tax Act” was passed in 1937, a vile narrative had been formed: that Latino immigrants were inferior workers to the mythical “American” and their habit of smoking cannabis was partly to blame. It is easy to see how this prohibition was twofold– it upheld dominant cultural prejudices of the time while attempting to curtail the spread of a mind-expanding and subversive tool into the general population. This perversion was generalized to racist ideologies in general when cannabis use was adopted by jazz musicians, and further developed to support fears of interracial relations.
In spite of the man’s efforts, cannabis use persisted in America. While at least half of Americans across all demographics claim to have tried marijuana, marijuana arrest statistics are so skewed that according to the ACLU Blacks are 3.73 times more likely than whites to be arrested for marijuana.
Thankfully, parts of our country today have become enlightened to this historical injustice and have moved to end the prohibition on marijuana– providing manifold opportunities to people who have previously been imprisoned, or even opportunities for business ownership to entrepreneurs. For the former group– the new lease on life afforded by rectification of a criminal record affords nearly infinite opportunities– even to join the ranks of newly-minted cannabis entrepreneurs and reap the spoils of this emerging industry.
As these strides continue, governments granting cannabis licenses should consider favoring disadvantaged business enterprises in a similar manner to what is currently done in public construction to further develop the moves for racial justice.