The Unintended Consequence of Trying to Give Black Marijuana Entrepreneurs a Head Start

The city’s effort to create a cannabis industry that mirrors — and benefits — its majority Black population has led to lawsuits and a collapsing marketplace. Meanwhile, the rest of the state thrives.

DETROIT — In February 2021, after four years of planning and saving, Kimberly Scott realized her dream of running a marijuana dispensary. She sunk her life savings into rehabbing a storefront in a scruffy neighborhood marked by shuttered warehouses and potholed streets. She didn’t know it, but the clock was ticking from the moment she first opened her doors.

“It was full of blight. It was an empty shell in here,” Scott recalled as we sat recently at a table inside Chronic City, her medical marijuana shop. “Everything I’ve spent is in this building.”

Scott saw the business as more than just a place to buy weed. She envisioned it as striking a blow against the decades-long War on Drugs that treated cannabis as a societal scourge and disproportionately targeted Black people like her. “I know that this plant, which has been demonized, is a powerful plant,” Scott, wearing a pair of giant cannabis leaf earrings, said. “A lot of families have been separated, and just traumatized, off of a plant that is now legal.” [Read More @ Politico]