EQUITABLE ENDEAVORS
It’s so easy for a cannabis enthusiast to be taken in by all the flashy numbers that tell of the stratospheric economic growth of the legal (“adult-use”) cannabis industry in America; such as the unprecedented 275 percent job growth every year since 2017, easily outdistancing every other industry nationwide. Or perhaps it’s the fact that Americans purchased $18.3 billion dollars of cannabis products in 2020, a 71 percent increase in one year.
However, there is a less well-known, though equally eye-opening statistic, and that is the disproportion between white-owned and people of color/women-owned cannabis businesses. According to an eye-opening, recent report issued by MJBizDaily, the number of executive-level females and minorities working in legal weed actually fell from 2019 to 2021, despite the massive increases in legal weed profits.
The sheer number of executive positions held by females in the cannabis industry fell from nearly 37 percent as recently as 2019 down to 22 percent in 2021. And these disturbing trends become more magnified when contrasted with the acceleration of women holding executive titles in the overall economy—up to almost 30 percent this past year, compared to merely 21 percent as recently as 2018. In other words, what was once very recently a point of equity-superiority for the cannabis industry has now been reduced to a declining point of concern.
A similar sad story is being told among minority owners/executives in the cannabis industry, which has drastically decreased from 28 percent in 2019 down to a meager 13 percent this past year. As delineated by a section in the Leafly 2021 Jobs Report entitled “A Major Challenge: Black Ownership in the Cannabis Industry,” African-Americans only represent less than two percent of all cannabis business owners, despite having a nationwide population over six times that percentage (Black Americans amount for 13 percent of the US population).
The fact that Black Americans are missing out on this 21st century ganja gold rush serves as a harsh reminder that the racial-based injustices of the War on Drugs have persisted even now in this era of capitalist cannabis.
However, there are measures being taken by state and local governments to correct these imbalances, chief among them being Social Equity Programs (SEP). But is it enough?
White male ownership has consolidated its grip on the ganja industry, due to their generally having stronger access to the necessary capital to expand their companies’ market-share that increases their profits while simultaneously diminishing the value of their competitors—which are all too often smaller, “mom and pop” cannabis companies—who have less access to assets.
According to an analysis issued in Summer 2021 by , white males comprise 70 percent of the, only seven were Black.
