Dominique Easley first relied on marijuana to help him quit opioid dependence. He was prescribed for multiple football injuries during his college and professional football careers.
As Easley explained, medical marijuana legal in California helped him fall asleep and provided him with a way to start self-repair. His sister also got help from marijuana in her lifelong struggle with fibromyalgia.
Easley’s college teammate, Jordan Reed, won a full-professional honor in the National Football League, and he has never been an opioid user. After several concussions and a second foot surgery, he began to explore cannabis and was convinced of its value as a holistic medicine for pain and depression.
When Reid invested in legal marijuana in Colorado and later in other states, Easley sought a license in New Jersey. The two eventually teamed up with other investors to form BPH Legacy Partners to seek multiple cannabis licenses, focusing on rural areas with large ethnic minority populations plagued by opioid addiction.
In telling stories about the benefits of marijuana use, Easley and Reid also spread the awareness that the historical suppression of African Americans is the reason behind the ban on marijuana use. The two seek to remove or even ban the federal Schedule I list of cannabis research, and remove barriers to minority participation in legal cannabis businesses.
Schedule I and the ban on cannabis research
President Roosevelt’s 1937 marijuana tax law was driven by open racism because Newspaper announced “This thing allows white women to have sex with black men. However, marijuana is listed as Legal drugs In the United States until 1942.
Under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, Attorney General John Mitchell declared cannabis a Schedule I drug due to President Nixon’s desire to prosecute anti-war leftists and black men.Nixon’s own Shaffer committee has announced Cannabis is safe As alcohol, but Schedule I lists it as a drug with no medical value and a high possibility of abuse.
DEA rejected an unplanned proposal by DEA Chief Justice Francis Young, who declared that “marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.” The other four petitions were also dusty. Settled.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, the DEA still justifies the inclusion of Schedule I on the list. Lack of research And continue to prohibit private laboratories from engaging in scientific research that is beneficial to them. Their stubbornness confuses state legislators, doctors and citizens, as well as foreign researchers, who have proven the many beneficial uses of cannabinoids.
Newest Gallup Poll Shows overwhelming public support for complete legalization or decriminalization (eliminating the stigma of Schedule I). At the same time, the opioids in Schedule I killed nearly 50,000 Americans in 2019, compared with only 21,000 in 2010.In fact, no one has died from the use of marijuana, but the federal action has not yet been launched. The most recent one was due to President Biden’s Lifetime opposition To legalization.
Few people fall into the trap of cannabis marketing
Since California legalized cannabis for medical use in 1999, Golden State and many other states have legalized cannabis for medical and recreational use. Some people have also begun to clear previous convictions for marijuana-related crimes. However, Nixon Mitchell’s race-based ban is still a federal law.
The deprivation of rights of blacks facilitated by Schedule I also led to asset poverty, which provided an effective barrier to entry into the cannabis business. As of 2020, White families own 85.5% of the nation’s wealth; whites have an average net worth of $437,000 per capita, four times that of black Americans.
According to Schedule 1, DEA has the right Prosecute any financial transactions involving cannabis-related business proceeds under federal law as a money laundering activity.As the American Bankers Association recognized in 2019, “Current federal law prohibits banks from safely transferring these [cannabis] enterprise. “
ABA supports the creation of “a banking-specific solution that will… allow banks to provide services to cannabis-related businesses in states where activities are legal.” At the same time, cannabis-related businesses cannot obtain credit. Need a lot of cash to enter. Some banks now accept deposits from cannabis companies, but traditional financing options are still taboo.
In some states, despite the high fees, Already established “Fair” plans to reverse past banned mistakes or create a more inclusive cannabis industry. However, even where these exist, the results have been mixed.
Michigan A state application fee of US$6,000, a state regulatory evaluation fee of US$66,000, a local municipal application fee of US$5,000, and a proof of assets of US$200,000 are required. However, of the state’s first batch of 233 cannabis licenses, only half a dozen were issued to minority majority companies. as a response, Michigan created A micro-enterprise licensing program that opens the door to new entrepreneurs and small business owners.
The Maryland Medical Marijuana Commission recognized that Only 10% Investors in cannabis in the state are people of color, most of whom only own a small number of shares in licensed companies. The state legalized medical marijuana in 2017 and created a “point of diversity” for eligible applicants in 2018 to increase minority participation in the industry.However, black Marylanders still Twice as likely Although the state legalized marijuana possession in 2014, more people were arrested for possession of marijuana than whites in Maryland.
As Reed observed, “For ordinary minority applicants, the licensing process in most states alone is daunting.” Easley admitted that their professional football background helped them enter the industry. He sighed and said, “Many of our friends have closed the door to them because of lack of funds or even ethnic minority status.”
Duggan Flanakin is a journalist, policy analyst, and poet living in Austin, Texas.
