The Fight for Fair Cannabis
As the legalization of marijuana gains momentum across the country, proponents of fair drug policy are working for measures that help repair the damage done by the War on Drugs.
Embedded Files
By Gabriela Venegas-Ramirez
“Weed is political,” Tripp Hopkins says. “You can't have cannabis without it being related to the War on Drugs, to the politics of racial struggle in general.”
Hopkins, 20, is armed with a contagious smile, a love for his community, and a project for justice: PVD Flowers, a newly formed worker-owned cannabis cooperative, is fighting for a more equal cannabis industry in the Ocean State.
In the last decade, moves to legalize marijuana have gained momentum across the country. As states take action, businesses are mobilizing to be a part of this new, profitable industry. Yet an estimated 40,000 people in the U.S. remain behind bars for possessing marijuana. Most of those incarcerated are people of color. A 2020 ACLU report shows that the criminalization of marijuana, as part of the U.S. War on Drugs, has targeted people of color and low income communities. Black people are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possession of the drug than their white counterparts, despite similar rates of use.
As more states craft policies for legalizing the drug, social justice advocates are demanding legislation include reparative measures to ensure a more equitable industry.
In the country’s smallest state, these efforts are proving successful. In May 2022, Rhode Island became the 19th state to legalize recreational marijuana. Thanks to advocacy from Rhode Island advocacy organizations, the new law provides communities that have been harmed by the War on Drugs the opportunity to build equity and ownership in the new industry.
This is where worker cooperatives like PVD Flowers come in. The business will focus, Hopkins says, “on uplifting our formerly incarcerated community and our BIPOC community, who were most affected by the War on Drugs.”
Initiated by President Nixon in the 70s, the War on Drugs “had a predominant effect in Black and Brown communities, and it affects people to this day,” says Harrison Tuttle, executive director of Black Lives Matter RI PAC. According to a 2015 report by the Drug Policy Alliance, nearly 80% of people in federal prisons and 60% of people in state prisons for drug offenses are Black or Latino. An ACLU report found that in 2010, 52% of all drug arrests in the U.S. were for possession of marijuana.
In response, many advocates and legislators across the U.S. have called for the legalization of the drug. But the benefits of legalization have disproportionately benefited corporations over those who were harmed by the War on Drugs. The American cannabis industry is projected to generate nearly $32 billion in annual sales by the end of this year. By 2024 this number is expected to rise to $45 billion.
This revenue will go primarily to white Americans: a 2017 Marijuana Business Daily survey found that 81% of cannabis businesses owners were white. Four years later an analysis from Business Insider found that 90% of these owners were white.
When legislators in Rhode Island began to propose legalizing the drug, activists and labor organizers mobilized to ensure fair and reparative legislation. Under the name of the RI Cannabis Justice Coalition, these organizations included Reclaim RI, the Formerly Incarcerated Union of Rhode Island, Black Lives Matter RI, DARE (Direct Action for Rights & Equality), UFCW Local 328, and other organizations. “What we stand for as part of this coalition is social and racial equity, labor solidarity, minority owned businesses, cooperative ownership, and helping those directly impacted by the war on drugs,” says Sam Marvin, organizing director of UFCW Local 328, a union representing cannabis workers.
Signed by Gov. Dan McKee in May 2022, the Rhode Island Cannabis Act legalized possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 or older, and will distribute 24 retail licenses across six zones in the state. The Cannabis Justice Coalition’s advocacy led to amendments to promote social justice and reparations have successfully been added to the legislation. The law will include the automatic expungement of previous cannabis offenses, the creation of a social equity fund, and licenses designated for social equity applicants and worker-owned cooperatives.
Automatic expungement guarantees, in most cases, that any prior conviction for possession of marijuana will be removed from court records. Under the new legislation, the Rhode Island Supreme Court has until July 1, 2024 to clear the nearly 27,000 state records. “The record expungement is huge,” Tuttle says, “to ensure people aren't discriminated against because of their criminal records." Criminal records create huge barriers to finding employment, housing, and even voting, a Marshall Project report shows.
The expungement is “a critical first step in addressing the harm of the War on Drugs,” Marvin says. “You cannot have an equitable legalization without first addressing the harms that the prohibitions of cannabis have done.”
Another provision promotes social equity and worker-owned cooperative licenses. These licenses will help ensure that a portion of the industry will go to businesses owned by working-class people and people of color. Of the 24 new cannabis licenses to be distributed in Rhode Island, six will be reserved for social equity applicants, and six for worker-owned cooperatives (or co-ops). The remaining twelve will go to traditional LLCs.
“You can never get back the time that folks had spent in for marijuana,” Tuttle says, “so now, the most just thing is to provide them an opportunity to start a business, to start a better life, because it was taken away from them.”
The law also includes a $1 million social equity fund, collected from traditional LLCs, to provide grants for social equity applicants, promote job training, and conduct programs for restorative justice, rehabilitation, and education.
The worker-owned cooperative licenses have a similar goal. “Cannabis co-ops offer communities that have been harmed by the War on Drugs the opportunity to build equity and ownership,” Marvin says. “This is about building actual equity, and that’s what being a worker cooperative member really does: You work there, but you also own equity in the company.”
A worker cooperative is a company that is owned and managed by the workers themselves, in which every worker has a say in the direction of the business and a share in the profit. PVD Flowers is hoping to obtain one of the six licenses reserved for co-ops in the state law.
PVD Flowers’ team consists entirely of volunteers and is led by Tripp Hopkins and Emma Karnes, an organizer with the UFCW. Karnes also manages the RI Cannabis Justice Coalition and is facilitating PVD Flowers’s development. She says that the co-op’s action plan is focused on developing bylaws and a business plan. PVD Flowers’ core group has been meeting twice a week to discuss how the cooperative is going to function and be organized. The group has been focusing on “how to make ends meet financially,” Karnes says. Still at the early stages of pursuing funding, the group has connected with co-op focused investors around the country.
However, the Cannabis Commission and the Advisory Board, the two bodies that will administer the co-op regulations, have not yet been established. “The governor was supposed to have appointed them last summer, and apparently the background checks are still going on,” Karnes says. For now, PVD Flowers is focusing on incorporating as a worker cooperative, connecting with producers and growing facilities, finding a location for the prospective dispensary, and growing their team and presence.
“Right now everything is very volunteer and start-up oriented,” Hopkins says. “But once the Commission and Board members are appointed we’ll have a much better idea of what exactly we need to be a worker cooperative.”
Hopkins considers the inclusion of worker cooperatives in Rhode Island’s cannabis legislation a big step toward creating a fair, reparative industry. “Historically, weed has always been used as leverage against Black communities and poor communities in America. The worker cooperative model is a way for us to get wealth and have it be a part of the community, instead of having it be controlled by a few.”
Karnes agrees. “If one out of four dispensaries in Rhode Island are owned by workers,” says Karnes, “25 percent of the profits of retail cannabis are going into the pockets of workers and communities. That is huge.”
Rhode Island is the first state to reserve licenses solely for cannabis worker cooperatives. Karnes is hopeful that other states will follow. “Rhode Island is a trailblazer in this way,” she says. If we show that this model works, that it produces viable businesses and has good impacts on communities, then hopefully other states building their cannabis markets will follow suit.”
Hopkins encourages others to educate themselves and to spread the word: ”Raise awareness about these local organizations,” he says – in particular “about PVD Flowers.”
Gabriela Venegas-Ramirez is a freshman at Brown, concentrating in Political Science and Economics.
Commentary:
This was definitely the most challenging article to write. I decided upon this topic because in my search for advocacy organizations in Rhode Island, I saw that a Cannabis Justice Coalition meeting was going to be held, to address the legacy of the War on Drugs. I attended the meeting, where I met a series of community leaders and learned about PVD Flowers. I decided that this Coalition’s efforts, and PVD Flowers, would be an interesting story to write about, and to simply learn about for myself. As I wrote, I also began to have the specific goal of directing this to the Brown student body, as cannabis use is pretty prevalent in our community. I wanted students to acknowledge the racialized history of the drug and its criminalization, and to be aware of what this new legalization means going forward. The article was overall very difficult to write, I had to do a lot of research about historical facts and legislation, as well as what community leaders to reach out to for interviews, and so on. It was also a challenge to decide upon my focus, but I’m happy with the way it turned out.
Sources:
Interview with Sam Marvin - April 21
Interview with Harrison Tuttle - April 21
Interview with Tripp Hopkins - March 11
Interview with Emma Karnes - May 4
https://www.aclu.org/report/tale-two-countries-racially-targeted-arrests-era-marijuana-reform
https://mjbizdaily.com/chart-19-cannabis-businesses-owned-founded-racial-minorities/
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/04/01/criminal-record-job-housing-barriers-discrimination
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