The cannabis industry is booming, but for many Black Americans the price of entry is steep
While Bernard Noble sat in a Louisiana jail riding out a 13year sentence for possession of 2.8 grams of marijuana, cannabis legalization and decriminalization swept through the United States. With no chance of parole under Louisiana’s “habitual offender” law – he had been arrested for possession of cocaine and marijuana in the past – Noble became a symbol for the movement to reform discriminatory drug laws.
Cannabis is a booming industry and the Covid-19 pandemic has, if anything, helped. The legal cannabis industry now accounts for 321,000 full-time jobs across the 37 states with legal medical or adult use markets, according to the cannabis information site Leafly’s 2020 jobs report. This past year, when much of the country was still reeling from Covid, the cannabis industry added 77,300 jobs, with US sales hitting $18.3bn. The result is a 32% increase in year-over-year growth – creating jobs at a faster rate than any other industry in the United States.
But for many Black Americans – who are close to four times as likely to be arrested for cannabis charges as white people – the prospect of generating wealth through the cannabis industry is out of reach.
The irony of Noble’s case wasn’t lost on the film-maker Fred Brathwaite, also known as the former Yo! MTV Raps host Fab 5 Freddy. When Noble was released in 2018 after serving seven years of his sentence, Brathwaite approached him with a business proposal.
“We’re taking 10% of the proceeds and donating to organizations working to expunge records and train people to be part of the business,” Brathwaite says. “Plus, we’re providing high quality cannabis.”
They entered into a 50/50 partnership with Curaleaf, a cannabis operating company, to create B Noble, a two joint pre-roll pack. The B Noble pack is symbolic of the two joints Noble possessed when he was arrested in 2010. On 28 August, Brathwaite and Noble spoke on the Growing in Cannabis: Seeds of Change panel at the National
Cannabis Festival in Washington DC. Brathwaite told the audience he learned a lot about racism in the cannabis industry while filming his documentary Grass is Greener.
“The people that pioneered it as a business in many urban communities are prevented from taking part in the business, and that’s unfair,” he said.
For many in those communities the major barrier to access is the licensing process itself, says Morgan Fox, spokesperson for the National Can