DRUG WAR REPARATIONS

The Big Apple is preparing for an unusual recruitment drive to find entrepreneurs to lead the creation of a multi-billion-dollar cannabis marketplace.

Besides a track record in business, officials are seeking applicants with convictions and, more specifically, criminal convictions for a cannabisrelated offence before the drug was legalised.

The first 200 retail licences will go to people who were prosecuted in relation to the drug that is now to be sold in shops. If they were not prosecuted personally, they must have a close relative who was convicted.

The regulations are intended partly to provide a form of redress to some of those now considered casualties of the war on drugs. “Cannabis prosecutions significantly impacted minorities, young black men in particular,” said John Kagia of New Frontier Data.