Let’s Talk About Cannabis and Race

SUPPORTING A MORE EQUITABLE CANNABIS INDUSTRY.

Cannabis and CBD can add so much joy and relaxation to your life. That being said, the history of cannabis is complicated. Especially when it comes to race.  Normally, I like to keep it chill (especially when it comes to cannabis), but to honor Black History month, I want to dive into the not-so-chill side of cannabis. In many ways, the story of cannabis reflects the complex history of race and class in America.  One way the media villainizes a drug is to associate it with a “bad kid” or “hippie” stereotype.  Cannabis is no different.  Throughout history, the rhetoric surrounding cannabis has been used to disproportionately criminalize Black people and immigrants - and is still influencing current cannabis policies. To understand why this could be, we need to go back to the beginning - at least for the United States. 

Louis Armstrong

Living Life Fearless

IT ALL STARTS WITH HEMP

Let’s be clear. The history of Cannabis does not originate in the United States.  People have been using the hemp plant for all kinds of reasons for centuries.  All the way back in 2500 B.C., nobles were being buried with mummified cannabis in regions of China and Siberia. The story of cannabis in the United States starts with hemp. Yep, before cotton was king, the hemp plant was grown and sold to produce everything from paper and oil, to rope and ship sails. European settlers brought hemp seeds with them to the Americas. One of the first recorded hemp crops was in Kentucky, in 1775. And guess how hemp was grown? You guessed it. On farms and plantations fueled by slave labor.  In his book “A History of the Hemp Industry in Kentucky, James F. Hopkins writes that .. “Without hemp, slavery might not have flourished in Kentucky.” Hopkins notes that hemp and slavery were so intertwined that Kentuckians would refer to hemp as “a ‘n***** crop,’ owing to a belief that no one understood its eccentricities as well or was as expert in handling” the plant as Black people.

JAZZ MUSIC AND “MARIHUANA”

Now let’s jump forward to the 1930s and the end of the Prohibition Era in the United States. The Treasury Department’s Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) was in charge of running prohibition efforts, but once gin and tonics were legal again (thank goodness), the bureau needed a new enemy.  That’s where Harry J. Anslinger comes in. Anslinger was the first commissioner of the FBN and you can blame him for giving cannabis a bad rap.   

At the time, cannabis was not classified as a major drug, but Anslinger used fear and racist stereotypes to turn the popular opinion against cannabis.  Anslinger even went so far as to call Jazz music “Satanic” and the “result from marijuana usage.”   It was Anslinger and his supporters who rebranded “cannabis” to “Marihuana” (the Mexican word for the plant) in the mainstream media.  A wave of anti-cannabis propaganda swept the country.  Cannabis was depicted as a gateway drug and a threat to the American way of life. 

Anslinger drafted the Marihuana Tax Act, which raised taxes and increased regulations on all imports and exports of cannabis. The law passed in 1937. On its face, the Marihuana Tax Act was supposed to stop the recreational use of Cannabis. But in practice, the act ended up squashing the entire industrial hemp (cannabis) industry.  Fifteen years later, the Boggs Act of 1952 took it a step further by making it mandatory to give a sentence for all drug convictions.  

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE “WAR ON DRUGS”

First Lady Nancy Reagan launched "Just Say No," her anti-drug campaign, in 1984. She's seen here speaking at an anti-drug conference at the White House.

Doug Mills/Bettmann/CORBIS

Don’t worry, it gets worse.  Under President Nixon, the Controlled Substances Act was passed. This new law made cannabis a Schedule I drug - putting Cannabis in the same category as heroin.  In 1971, Nixon declared a “war on drugs,” which escalated the already high levels of policing in black and brown communities. In case you are wondering if these new drug policies were racially motivated, they were.  Nixon’s white house knew what they were doing.  Nixon’s Chief Domestic Advisor, John Ehrlichman, fully admitted that Nixon’s White House “had two enemies: The antiwar left and black people.”  In a 1994 Harper’s Magazine interview, Ehrlichman explains, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities.”  It’s incredibly sad that a plant, which is now so widely accepted, was used as an excuse to criminalize people and communities. NOT chill at all. 

Want to know what’s even less chill?  This racist bias is still with us today.  Kansas State Representative Steve Alford warned against the further legalization of cannabis by suggesting that the “character makeup” and “genetics” of Black people made them more susceptible to drugs.

Needless to say, there’s a lot more to unpack when it comes to how race influences how and the degrees to which cannabis laws are enforced.  A 2018 report by the American Civil Liberties Union found that “Black people were 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people.”  As recent as 2018, 43% of all drug arrests were connected to cannabis and 89.6% of those arrests were for possession only.  Even with an overall decrease in arrests for possession where cannabis is legalized or decriminalized, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.  The ACLU found that even “In some legalized states, such as Maine and Massachusetts, the racial disparities in marijuana possession arrests were larger in 2018 than in 2010.”  

MORE EQUITY MOVING FORWARD

So where does all this leave us?  The first step is learning about the past and making a conscious effort to correct course in the years to come. It’s time for the cannabis industry to acknowledge its connection to historical inequities and injustices toward communities of color. 

Amber Sent, the founder of Supernova Woman

Sound Cloud

Organizations like The Last Prisoner Project are working on criminal justice reform and helping the communities most impacted by cannabis laws achieve more equity within the industry.  Cities like San Francisco and Seattle have taken steps toward expunging non-violent cannabis charges. And California is attempting to level the playing field with social equity programs aimed at making loans and grants more accessible for small cannabis businesses.  As the cannabis industry navigates the road ahead, it’ll need the help of amazing leaders like Amber Senter, who is the founder of Supernova Woman - an organization dedicated to networking, education, and professional development for women of color in the cannabis industry.

While cannabis may have been used for harm in the past, we now have the chance to use it for good.  Everyone can find ways to amplify black voices in cannabis and help build a more equitable (and way more chill) future.