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By Laury C. Lucien
As the 12th state to legalize cannabis, New Jersey is positioned to learn from a decade’s worth of experiences to create a racially and socially just industry.
As currently written, New Jersey’s bill to implement legalization repeats some of the mistakes that have led to an inequitable cannabis industry in state after state, including my home state of Massachusetts.
New Jersey must create an inclusive and diverse industry from the start, by lifting the financial barriers to entry for applicants who have borne the greatest injustices of the drug war.
Because of the early inattention to meaningful equity policies, the cannabis industry as a whole mirrors the vast majority of other industries – controlled by wealthy white men and corporate interests. Many states are now attempting to insert equity and community reinvestment into the existing marketplace. New Jersey has the opportunity to get it right from the start.
Since New Jersey voters overwhelmingly approved cannabis legalization in November, advocates at multiple legislative hearings have delivered hours-long testimony with a unified message: for equity, lawmakers have to put their money where their mouth is. We need legislation that advances social justice not just symbolically but in reality.
Massachusetts, where I am the co-founder and CEO of Major Bloom, LLC, a Certified Economic Empowerment Marijuana business, provides an object lesson in the limits of well-meaning policies that tried and failed to include those most harmed by the drug war in the new cannabis industry. Ultimately, the state’s failure to provide adequate access to start-up resources doomed those programs to become window dressing, incapable of countering a deeply inequitable status quo.
Massachusetts’ tiered license-review process gave first priority on paper to economic-empowerment applicants – but shared with existing medical marijuana businesses, which generally have access to capital and competitive advantages from years in the industry. Secondary priority was given to minority-owned, women-owned, and veteran-owned businesses.
The dismal numbers speak for themselves.
Today, out of the 209 final licenses issued by Massachusetts, only three are held by economic-empowerment applicants and six are held by certified minority-owned businesses. Of 515 provisional licenses/provisional license considerations, economic-empowerment applicants have received 11 and minority-owned businesses have received 58.
Conversely, existing medical marijuana businesses have capitalized on their head start. Of the 724 licenses issued, medical marijuana companies received 228: 145 final licenses and 83 provisional licenses or provisional license considerations.
Massachusetts also introduced a social-equity program aimed at removing barriers to entering the cannabis industry, giving participants technical support, reduced fees, expedited review, and extended three-year delivery-retailer licenses.
However, the failure to include start-up capital for people most harmed by prohibition created an industry that rewards the well-resourced and well-connected while only paying lip service to equitable access. Predatory investors have exploited those most harmed by cannabis criminalization by making them the faces of their businesses while structuring ownership to cut them out of the profits.
A few initial steps can prevent New Jersey from repeating that history.
First, lawmakers must eliminate the loophole that allows well-resourced non-residents who hire residents of impact-zones to qualify as impact-zone applicants. Impact-zone status under the current proposal applies to individuals who have lived in an impact-zone for at least three years. Yet businesses that employ impact-zone residents as 25% of their workforce also receive impact-zone priority.
Real equity means full participation and ownership, not just working at a cannabis establishment to make profits for someone else.
Only residents of impact zones for five of the last 10 years should qualify for this status. In addition, those impact-zone applicants must commit to hiring at least 25% of their workers from impact zones.
The second step is creating an equity applicant status that gives grants, reduced fees, priority status, and access to resources like technical assistance and opportunities to rent unused government properties to impact-zone applicants, along with people with prior cannabis-related criminal records and their families.
Some lawmakers claim legalization is enough of a racial justice victory on its own, as if the struggle for meaningful racial justice stopped at the ballot box. Instead of platitudes and good intentions, what communities of color want is meaningful support to enter the industry and opportunities for ownership that can extend the creation of wealth to include the communities that have suffered the most harm from cannabis criminalization.
We have learned from experience what is required to create equity, and lawmakers must listen to calls to do more. Without such intentionality, New Jersey will create yet another industry that is not accessible to anyone but the most well-resourced individuals and corporations.
Laury C. Lucien Esq. is a cannabis attorney, law professor, and entrepreneur, as the co-founder and CEO of Major Bloom, LLC, a vertically integrated marijuana business with two licensed locations in Massachusetts, where she lives.
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