M2 Urges the U.S. Senate to Move Toward Marijuana Restorative Justice Initiatives that Helps Communities Recover from the War on Drugs

For Immediate Release 

Washington, D.C. — MARIJUANA MATTERS COMMENTS ON CANNABIS ADMINISTRATION OPPORTUNITY ACT - Discussion Draft: Schumer, Booker and Wyden

“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? 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. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course, we did.” – John Ehrlichman, Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under President Richard Nixon[i]

Marijuana Matters is a social enterprise working at the nexus of community, industry and government. Our mission is to create pathways out of poverty for those most harmed by the war on drugs through advocacy, education and entrepreneurship.  

Marijuana Matters works to inform the public about the impact of public policies regulating cannabis and cannabis-derived products.

Through advocacy, entrepreneurship, and education, Marijuana Matters identifies and eliminates barriers to economic opportunity in regulated cannabis markets for those disadvantaged by marijuana’s criminalization. Our vision is simple: repair what’s been dismantled, restore what’s been destroyed, and reclaim what’s been displaced.

The Civil Liberties Act of 1988 paid $20,000 in compensation to each of the more than 100,000 remaining Japanese Americans incarcerated in internment camps during World War II.[ii] At the same time, President Reagan—responsible for reparations to Japanese Americans—fueled the drug war on African Americans. In 2015, John Ehrlichman, a key advisor to the Nixon administration, confirmed what many had already concluded: the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 was politically and racially motivated. Stricter sentencing laws such as mandatory minimums and the three strikes rule would lead to the arrest and imprisonment of more than four million African Americans from 2001 to 2015—more than 100 times the number of Japanese Americans imprisoned during internment.

Of those four million previously incarcerated African Americans, nearly 75 percent of them are among the lowest-income earners in America.[iii] The staggering poverty level can be attributed to a long history of state-sanctioned systemic racial terrorism, from slavery to Jim Crow to the war on drugs. An estimated one in three African American males will be incarcerated in their lifetimes. If current arrest trends hold, more than 80 percent of them will serve time for nonviolent drug offenses. Research by Steven Raphael from the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley[iv] shows that these historically and extraordinarily high incarceration rates have interrupted potential careers in legitimate labor markets for all African Americans, both imprisoned and non-imprisoned. Partially due to those lost labor-market opportunities, the median wealth of African Americans declined from $6,800 in 1999 to $1,233 in 2013, while the median wealth of White Americans increased from $102,000 to $122,336.[v] According to the Institute for Policy Studies, African Americans as a group are headed to zero wealth by 2053 if current trends hold.

The consequence is clear: incarceration robs families, neighborhoods, and entire communities of their most valuable resource—their people—the war on drugs succeeded in interrupting the dreams of African Americans and placing us in financial bondage. Meanwhile, White Americans have gained from the mistreatment and criminalization of Black people.

Now White Americans are poised to benefit from an estimated $100 billion cannabis market whose regulations uniquely disadvantage the very populations centered in the social justice movement to decriminalize marijuana. Deliberate or not, the current state of the industry privileges White people; African Americans and Latinos make up less than 1 percent of cannabis market ownership. We have seen a concerted effort by big marijuana to limit opportunities and support regulations that create barriers to entry for the very people the laws are meant to help. As marijuana makes its mainstream debut, we have a real opportunity to talk about repairing the harm from a failed war on drugs.

African Americans have waited a long time for their “40 Acres and a Mule.”[vi] The reparations argument has a long history of debate in this country, most recently resurfaced in national discourse by Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates.[vii] Because Coates so thoroughly elucidated the harm from centuries of systemic and intentional infractions against African Americans, I need not pick up the case for slavery restitution here. Instead, my intention is to make the case for retribution for the war on drugs. Conversations around reparations always die with the mention of the price tag—a nonstarter without a revenue stream. However, the taxation possibilities in marijuana legalization should reopen the debate.

In states like New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey, elected officials move toward marijuana restorative justice initiatives such as equity in cannabis programs to help previously incarcerated cannabis entrepreneurs. Other states are expunging records and erasing convictions. These are all steps in the right direction, but they are not enough. Much like how the taxpayer-funded programs such as the GI Bill and FHA loans helped pave the way for middle-class White Americans, cannabis tax revenues should support a drug-war-justice reparations fund intended to build and strengthen the African American middle class.

In addition to direct payment to individuals, exclusive cannabis cultivations contracts should be given to institutions with an expressed and deliberate mission to elevate and educate African Americans, like historically Black colleges and universities. For example, Louisiana inked a $500-million deal with Louisiana State University for exclusive medicinal cannabis cultivation rights.[viii] The $41-billion savings from Senator Cory Booker’s proposed Marijuana Justice Act,[ix] which calls for the immediate release of all those incarcerated for nonviolent marijuana-related charges, should be invested in the neighborhoods to which these men and women will return.

The US government’s conduct during the war on drugs caused severe emotional distress to African Americans and their communities, resulting in collateral consequences that perpetuate an unrelenting cycle of poverty. By the government’s own admission, African Americans have been disproportionately targeted, arrested, and incarcerated. It would be unethical for those most harmed by the war on drugs to be left without restitution when new funds are readily available.

For all the hard-fought victories of the Civil Rights Movement -- fair housing, expanded opportunities in education, employment opportunities, building the wealth of the African-American community, the failed policies of the war on drugs single-handedly undid all of that. Elected leaders cannot ignore the evidence that the War on Drugs has destabilized African American communities and therefore cannot legalize marijuana at the federal level without an intentional and thoughtful approach to addressing the harm, the collateral consequences. Any legislation that seeks to reestablish marijuana as a legitimate crop to be cultivated, manufactured, processed, sold, distributed across jurisdictions should without a doubt seek to remedy the harms caused by its criminalization. As a credible and respected organization of tribe members who work to reclaim, restore and repair the harm of the war on drugs, Marijuana Matters affirms support to legislation that at its minimum includes the following; 

• ESTABLISH MINIMUM SOCIAL EQUITY PROVISIONS AND THRESHOLDS REQUIRED BY ALL STATE OPERATING REGULATED CANNABIS  

• AUTOMATIC RELEASE OF INDIVIDUALS WITH MARIJUANA OFFENSES FROM LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL FACILITIES WITH A PATHWAY FOR THOSE WITH VIOLENT OFFENSES TO PETITION FOR RELEASE

• REMOVAL OF MARIJUANA FROM CONTROLLED SUBSTANCE ACT

• CREATE INSTITUTE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CANNABIS SCIENCE, HEALTH AND EDUCATION RESEARCH TO ADDRESS INEQUITIES FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITIES 

• DIRECT TAX REVENUE TO THE CREATION OF HBCU CANNABIS RESEARCH CONSORTIUM TO LEAD COMPETENT AND RELIABLE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH

• MANDATE THE HEALTH IMPACT ASSESSMENTS AT LOCAL, STATE AND FEDERAL LEVELS 

• ESTABLISH DRUG WAR JUSTICE FUND TO BE FUNDED BY TAX REVENUE TO EXECUTE CDFI AND OTHER MINORITY-OWNED BANKS TO ADMINISTER NO-INTEREST LOANS AND FINANCING EDUCATION.  

Marijuana Matters welcomes the opportunity to engage in thoughtful discussion on improving the lives of individuals and communities most harmed by the American Drug War. 

The organization’s staff, advisory council and supporters stand ready to provide counsel and perspectives that center the lives of those individuals from communities most harmed by the war on drugs.