Grass is Greener/Fred Brathwaite
Marijuana prohibition laws have served as a proxy for racism—contributing to racialized “control” of Mexican immigration, and policing targeting black people.
Born and bred in a farming family, Clarenda Anderson has farming in her blood. Given the economic challenges facing so many farmers, though, the occupation wasn’t something she envisioned doing for a living. But Anderson and her husband nevertheless found a calling in a particularly lucrative corner of agriculture—hemp farming.
“Malcolm is a grower,” she tells me, referring to her husband. “So we knew that when marijuana became legal in North Carolina we could start growing on a commercial level.” North Carolina legalized hemp farming in 2015, and under the 2018 Farm Bill, CBD is legal nationwide, if it comes from hemp rather than marijuana and contains less than 0.03 percent THC — the compound giving marijuana its psychological effects.
Hemp and marijuana have ballooned into multi-billion-dollar industries worldwide. As more states dismantle prohibition policies to give the green light on recreational use and sale, billions of investment dollars are pouring into cannabis companies from corporations and business leaders.
But Clarenda and Malcolm Anderson, both African American and owners of Green Heffa Farms, say that discriminatory lending practices by financial institutions has been a huge barrier for them and other black people wanting to take advantage of the business opportunities burgeoning around this much-maligned plant.
“When it comes to minorities, they [banks] tend to identify them as white women and we didn’t fit that profile,” the Andersons told me about their efforts two years ago to get approved for a loan to open up their own hemp farm.
“When it comes to minorities, [banks] tend to identify them as white women and we didn’t fit that profile.”
The irony of people of color being shut out of emerging business opportunities generated by a plant long associated with racist policing has not gone unnoticed. As political candidates, especially Democrats, rush to get on board with legal marijuana, many people of color languish in prison or suffer the loss of a family member due to discriminatory drug policies.
“Many mothers have been separated from their children and evicted from their homes because of marijuana use or possession,” says Dionna King, of the group Drug Policy Alliance in New York.
King, who works on a reparative justice campaign focusing on the harms caused by the war on drugs in New York State, adds that although there has been a shift in the way state legislators address marijuana use, “we’re still undoing reams of drug policies that have resulted in the criminalization of blacks and Latinos for decades.”
The War on Drugs has yielded much misery and, many acknowledge, minimal results, even as it cost taxpayers an estimated $1 trillion dollars. There’s a long way to go in righting the wrongs of U.S. drug policy, and no set process to assess the damage to countless black and brown lives.
A recently released Netflix documentary “Grass is Greener” unpacks the complicated history of marijuana, tracing its history since it became the primary target of prohibition policies in the early 1930s to now being favored for legalization by a majority of Americans.
Directed by hip hop pioneer and self-proclaimed cannabis connoisseur Fred Brathwaite, better known as Fab 5 Freddy, the film roots its storytelling in the birthplace of jazz, New Orleans. Used by jazz heavyweights like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and reggae legend Bob Marley, cannabis has been fused with black music and culture for decades. Today, Braithwaite states in the film, it serves as muse for hip-hop greats like long-time advocate Snoop Dogg.
The documentary also highlights how marijuana prohibition laws have served as a proxy for racism—contributing to racialized “control” of Mexican immigration, for example, and policing that targets black people for imprisonment.
All this is salt in the wound for minorities now fighting for entry into the regulated cannabis industry.
With big corporations and private equity monopolizing opportunities in the cannabis industry , people like thirty-nine-year-old Alphonso “Tucky” Blunt saw getting a foot in the industry as a pipe dream. He had little start-up capital and an arrest on his record for marijuana possession.
But an equity permit program in Oakland has provided at least one of those affected by the War on Drugs a shot at entering the business. Blunt was able to get his record expunged and win a license to open a dispensary last year.
“Owning a dispensary has always been something that I wanted but I just didn’t have the equity like many other minorities who want to get their start,” says Blunt.
Racial and economic disparities will undoubtedly persist as the cannabis industry expands, and equity efforts, including the one in Oakland, have struggled. However, as states make it a priority to include language in laws to protect minorities, Blunt is hopeful for change that will give people himself who have been targeted by cannabis prohibition laws a chance to succeed.
“The biggest thing is education and making sure there’s a fair and equal playing field for everyone,” he says.
Others are focusing on ensuring the banks don’t discriminate against minorities. With the industry projected to grow by $25 billion by 2025, the pie is big enough for everyone to get a decent slice. Yet African American entrepreneurs trying to break into the market are being shut out.
“In general the banking industry has not been good to black people, and the biggest barrier we face is access to capital,” says Shanita Penny, president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association.
Revisions to the federal Secure And Fair Enforcement Banking Act will require banks to report on their lending to minority-owned businesses.
Back in North Carolina, the Andersons are hopeful that a series of revisions to the federal Secure And Fair Enforcement Banking Act, approved by the House in March and introduced in the Senate in April, will give minorities more opportunities for advancement in the industry. The new version, which has widespread support including from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, would protect banks from being prosecuted by the federal government for servicing the cannabis industry.
But the new version will also require regulators of banks to publish annual reports tracking “information and data on the availability of access to financial services for minority-owned and women-owned cannabis-related legitimate businesses.” The regulators will also be tasked with issuing “regulatory or legislative recommendations for expanding access to financial services” for minorities.
“The law in North Carolina was designed to benefit white male landowners,” says Clarenda Anderson. “There hasn’t been much done by lawmakers to support black farmers and that’s why we want to continue raising awareness and educating our community.”