Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Locked Out: Thanks To State Policies, Minorities Are Being Left Behind By The Cannabis Industry, Nikitha Sattiraju, Evelina Nedlund

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Locked Out: Thanks to State Policies, Minorities Are Being Left Behind by the Cannabis Industry

Social justice provisions in states with legal cannabis usually include a percentage of business licenses for minorities and expungements for those formerly incarcerated for cannabis possession so they can participate in the industry. But that isn’t enough for minority communities to successfully start cannabis businesses. Expensive start-up and operation costs, competition from corporate cannabis, lack of banking services for the industry, and fear stemming from decades of over-policing for cannabis use continue to be major roadblocks.

Cannabis legislation across the country is failing to address …

Revival, Anya Van Wagtendonk

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My hometown, Great Barrington, MA, has one famous former resident: NAACP co-founder W.E.B. Du Bois. For generations, his legacy in the predominantly white town was hardly acknowledged. People actively protested the landmarking of his birth site in the 1960s. When I was a kid, plans to name a new middle school after him were scrapped after the uproar grew too loud. Even in this supposedly liberal enclave in western Massachusetts, people continued to object to his membership in the Communist Party. As former NAACP president Cornell Brooks said recently, this would be like Princeton, N.J., ignoring that Einstein had ever …