Giving Compass' Take:

• Oakland, CA is working to make sure that the newly-legal cannabis industry benefits those locals who suffered the worst impacts of the drug war. 

• Left unregulated, who would benefit most from the legal marijuana industry? How can other areas follow this model to reduce the inequity of the drug market? 

• Learn how Native Americans are fighting for their right to cannabis. 

As part of California’s 2018 adult-use marijuana legalization, Oakland sets aside half of its marijuana business permits to grow, test, manufacture, transport, deliver and dispense pot to “equity applicants”–newly up-from-the-underground residents who make up to 80% of the city’s median income ($53,000) and either have “a cannabis conviction out of Oakland or [have] lived for 10 of the last 20 years in police beats that experienced a disproportionately higher amount of law enforcement with respect to cannabis.” The city’s cannabis equity program has a tiered qualification system, as do California’s other three existing programs in San Francisco, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

However, if this bold concept is to cohere into a concrete approach that can work both statewide and nationally, the challenges of addressing wildly mixed signals at the federal level, relations with the still-illegal cannabis market–whose economy and membership dwarfs legal weed in size—and embedded bureaucratic forces must be overcome.

Still, governments had begun to follow Oakland’s lead in assuring that the newly legal marijuana market will be open to historically discriminated-against populations. Oakland earmarked nearly $3.5 million in interest-free loans for those whose experience with pot had been demonstrably more toxic than those of white residents.

Read the full article about legal marijuana and the drug wars by Donnell Alexander at FastCompany.