The co-founder of The People’s Dispensary in Oakland stood from her chair and raised her voice to remind the crowd that cannabis prohibition won’t be over until everyone behind bars for marijuana crimes — and particularly people of color — have been set free.

With a sentence, Turner captured the tremendous pressure facing an industry that’s already booming while the policies, culture and legacy of legal marijuana are just beginning to take shape.

Hundreds of pages of revised state regulations were released Friday, more than 10 months after California launched its legal recreational cannabis market. And panels at this week’s conference, put on by the National Cannabis Industry Association trade group, reflected those ongoing compliance struggles, with talks on taxes, insurance, lab testing, packaging and more.

“I didn’t think this would be easy, but I didn’t really know how hard it would be,” Lori Ajax, chief of the state’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, told the crowd during her keynote address.

Despite the daily struggles, advocates such as Turner are calling for the industry to not lose sight of the social justice components of legalization, with a push for policies that address the racial biases that have shaped cannabis policy for the past 100 years.

“If we do not undo that, we are piling injustice on top of injustice,” said DeAngelo, founder of Harborside dispensary in Oakland.

Etheridge, who has been a medical marijuana advocate turned entrepreneur since the plant helped the singer through a bout with breast cancer in 2005, is also fighting to ensure that the marijuana industry takes advantage of the rare opportunity to come of age in a post-#MeToo era.

“We can be the industry that sets the example for all other industries,” she said.

That’s a tall order for many marijuana businesses, which are just trying to survive in the face of hefty taxes, evolving regulations and a thriving black market.

The state plans to step up its efforts to give licensed businesses a fighting chance in 2019, Ajax assured the crowd Tuesday. Her bureau hopes to hire roughly 100 more staff members to its current roster of 79 employees, she said, with a growing focus on enforcement. That includes making sure licensed businesses are following the rules, with nearly 800 inspections at legal sites already complete.

The cannabis bureau in January plans to launch a $2 million public awareness campaign aimed at helping consumers know how to find legal businesses and letting the industry know it’s time to get licensed, Ajax said.

State regulators are also working on plans to offer $10 million in grants to local governments, such as Oakland and Los Angeles, which promised to build social equity programs that prioritize licenses for businesses owned by people who have been disproportionately affected by the war on drugs.

That’s why, even though the industry is still operating on temporary licenses and emergency regulations, Ajax said they’ve come a long way over the past year. And more changes are coming in 2019.

“I think next year is a whole new ballgame,” Ajax said.

To keep the industry moving in the right direction, DeAngelo said he hopes to see investment funds dedicated to supporting cannabis industry entrepreneurs of color.

Etheridge said she hopes to see advertisements that don’t denigrate women the way so many other industries and some in the marijuana industry historically have done.

“We can do these things,” DeAngelo said, calling on the industry to be proactive. “We can do better.”

Some employers seemed interested, until they found out about his 2008 misdemeanor conviction for growing marijuana.

“I was stuck,” recalled the 37-year-old college graduate. “No job opportunities were coming in.”

He found himself in the same situation as hundreds of thousands of others across the country whose prospects for the future were diminished by criminal records for marijuana cultivation or possession.

Now a new movement accompanying the widespread push for pot legalization may give them a second chance and help black and Latino neighborhoods that have been the focus of drug law enforcement. The aim is to wipe records clean and help people put their formerly illicit skills to use in the booming industry of legal cannabis.

It started in California in 2016 when voters approved Proposition 64, which not only legalized recreational marijuana, but also made it easier for people with pot convictions to expunge their records. Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco have started giving people with prior convictions — or those from neighborhoods that were once heavily targeted for marijuana-related arrests — priority for licenses to start new pot businesses.

New Jersey, North Dakota and Michigan may soon follow suit, with advocates for pot-legalization measures under consideration this fall making social and economic justice the centerpiece of their campaigns.

It’s a decisive shift from the traditional rationales for legalization — evolving public attitudes about the drug and the opportunity to tax it.

“In New Jersey, black residents are three times more likely than white residents to be arrested for marijuana offenses,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, said in an email explaining his support for a marijuana-legalization bill that lawmakers are expected to pass this month.

The law would “help break the cycle of nonviolent, low-level drug offenses that prevent people, especially people of color, from succeeding,” he said.

Research shows that whites, blacks and Latinos use and sell marijuana at similar rates, but that blacks by far are the most likely to be arrested in connection with the drug. One California study found that African Americans make up 6% of the state’s population, but are nearly a quarter of those serving time in jail exclusively for marijuana offenses.

In Oakland, where Jenkins grew up, blacks and whites each make up about 30% of the population. But 77% of the people arrested in connection with marijuana in 2015 were black, while just 4% were white, according to a recent report by the city. The analysis looked back to 1995 and found a similar pattern each year.

Jenkins, who is black, remembers watching marijuana sales as a child. Cars would come and go making purchases from pastel-colored duplexes that lined the hilly streets of East Oakland.

“It’s a part of life,” he said. “A lot of the weed being sold in Oakland was to wealthy whites in Berkeley and elsewhere in the Bay Area.”

“But we were getting arrested,” he said.

A lot of the weed being sold in Oakland was to wealthy whites in Berkeley and elsewhere in the Bay Area. But [black people] were getting arrested.

Rob Jenkins, whose 2008 conviction for growing marijuana has been expunged

Jenkins never set out to be a drug dealer. After graduating from San Jose State University in 2003 with a degree in sociology, he found work selling cars and internet plans and eventually got a job at Comcast answering complaints from customers for $15 an hour.

Even with his girlfriend’s income from a sales job at a department store, they struggled to pay the rent and care for their sons in rapidly gentrifying Oakland.

Jenkins started growing and selling marijuana in 2007 as an extra source of income, bringing in about $500 a week.

Then one night in November 2008, there were two knocks at his apartment door before police threatened to barge through it. When Jenkins let them in, several officers headed to a back room where sodium-pressure lights hovered above two dozen marijuana plants growing knee-high from buckets.

Jenkins never learned how police discovered his operation. He was one of 914 African Americans arrested on marijuana charges that year in Oakland.

He spent 24 hours behind bars before his mother, who worked at an electronics sales company, bailed him out. Jenkins was originally charged with a felony — he had a firearm in his home — but it was changed to a misdemeanor after prosecutors discovered the firearm was legally registered to him.

He started applying for jobs while he was still serving two years of probation and piled up more rejections than he can remember.

In 2011, he went back to illegally growing and selling marijuana. He said he stopped two years later after finally finding a legal job: growing pot for medical use for a dispensary in San Francisco.

But it was only part time, and Jenkins realized that his future was stalled unless he could clear his name. The next year, he spent $4,000 — a big chunk of his savings — to hire an attorney to successfully guide him through a little-known and highly uncertain legal process that allows some low-level marijuana offenders to petition the courts to expunge their convictions.

California’s new law seeks to popularize and streamline that process.

In January, San Francisco Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced that his office would begin to dismiss 3,000 marijuana misdemeanors dating back to 1975 and seal the records of those people sentenced before Proposition 64 passed. Nearly 5,000 felony convictions would also be reviewed for possible dismissal or resentencing. The process could take more than a year to complete.

In Alameda County, where Oakland is located, prosecutors have identified nearly 6,000 cases eligible for dismissal — an opportunity to alleviate past discrimination, said Dist. Atty. Nancy E. O’Malley. Of those, more than 600 people have filed petitions and had them granted.

“California is offering a second chance to people convicted of cannabis crimes,” O’Malley said.

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey has said her office will not automatically dismiss or reduce marijuana convictions and that people seeking to clear their records should do so using the courts.

But a bill passed in August and set to go into effect next year requires the California Department of Justice to prepare a list of people eligible to have their convictions dismissed and places the onus on county prosecutors to do so in all cases except those in which they determine there is “an unreasonable risk to public safety.”

Still, in some places, expunging those records is only a first step in righting the wrongs of the past.

Last year, Oakland officials created the nation’s first so-called social equity program, reserving at least half of all new cannabis dispensary licenses for residents targeted by discriminatory drug and sentencing laws.

The program is open to any resident with a cannabis conviction after 1996 — the year medical marijuana was passed — and no other criminal history. Also eligible are people who earn less than 80% of the city’s median income of $56,000 or who have lived for at least 10 years in a neighborhood deemed to have high numbers of pot-related arrests.

It also offers the chance to be paired with an investor — known as an incubator — who shares the license and funds the business for at least three years. Six of the eight permits granted by the city this year went to equity applicants.

“The creation of these equity programs is the beginning of acknowledging the greater issue of the criminalization of brown and black people,” said Nina Parks, an activist who worked with local officials to create the Oakland program as well as the one in San Francisco. “These policies are not reparations, but moves toward restoring justice.”

She and other supporters of the programs say it will take time and more publicity to see results. Many people are unaware of the equity programs or opportunities to expunge their records.

The efforts are not without controversy.

Some opponents argue that the law was the law and anybody who broke it should have to deal with the consequences.

Others such as Kevin A. Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which has spent thousands of dollars in recent years to oppose legalization of recreational pot, dismiss the notion that equity programs can really lift up poor neighborhoods.

“This is putting lipstick on a pig, and it’s an insult to vulnerable communities,” Sabet said in an email. “Unless the state gives away millions of dollars of free start-up money, do we think a kid from Compton is going to be able to compete against a Beverly Hills heir, let alone the Big Tobacco, alcohol, and pharma interests that are now swarming around the pot industry? It is the saddest attempt at social justice I have ever seen.”

Indeed, even some pot activists are worried that participants in equity programs could be manipulated by their investors and booted from the businesses after the three-year commitment ends.

“Of course there are going to be bad actors,” Parks said. “This is all so new that we’re going to need even more reforms and safeguards as this moves forward.”

Still, momentum is building across the country for similar programs.

Criminal justice reform will be a key consideration when voters or legislators in three states decide this fall whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use, as is already the case in California and eight other states.

North Dakota’s ballot proposal this November calls for the automatic expungement of some marijuana-related convictions. The Michigan measure, also being put before voters, would lower some criminal marijuana-related violations to civil infractions.

The New Jersey bill, which lawmakers plan to introduce as soon as this week, would make it easier for people with low-level convictions — possessing small amounts of pot — to clear their records.

It would also mandate that 25% of dispensary licenses must be issued to individuals who live in so-called social impact zones — areas with high poverty and disproportionate marijuana arrest rates.

“This kind of reform is long overdue,” Jenkins said.

Even so, his future is far from assured in a new and unstable industry.

Last year, Jenkins got a part-time job at a local cannabis nursery, planting and tending to various strains, which he also smokes on a regular basis. But he was laid off last month with 30 other employees because the company was having financial problems.

His best hope now is Oakland’s equity program, which accepted him earlier this year.

The city helped connect him with a team that plans to open a dispensary in November. Jenkins will be the grow manager. The investors have also committed to helping him open a pot nursery that would eventually belong entirely to him.

“I’ve had ups and downs, but others have had it way worse,” Jenkins said. “I’ve seen brothers locked up for years over some marijuana. Just marijuana. It’s not right.”

“We have to change this cycle,” he said.

—

©2018 the Los Angeles Times

Visit the Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — State lawmakers and advocates pushing to legalize marijuana this year aren’t just touting legalization as a way to raise tax revenue and regulate an underground pot market. They’re also talking about fixing a broken criminal justice system and reinvesting in poor and minority communities that have been battered by decades of the government’s war on drugs.

The focus on justice and equity has sharpened over time, longtime pot advocates say, as it’s become clear that such issues should be addressed and that doing so won’t alienate voters — most of whom, polls consistently show, support legal marijuana. Civil rights groups also have raised their voices in legalization discussions.

Now social justice provisions can be found in legalization proposals in both blue and red states, including several of the states where voters will face ballot measures on the issue in November. Social justice also is a talking point for opponents, who argue that allowing weed sales would hurt — not help — low-income and minority people.

“We don’t want either extreme. We don’t want incarceration, and we don’t want legalization and commercialization,” said Kevin Sabet, the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a coalition based in Alexandria, Va., that is opposing legalization efforts in multiple states.

Many state lawmakers say they back legalization because, first and foremost, it can be an opportunity to make changes to the criminal justice system and repair the harm done to groups disproportionately arrested for using the drug.

“For me, the social justice piece of it is much larger than, I think, the taxing and regulating — although that is important,” said New York Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, a Democrat who represents part of the city of Buffalo and has put forward a bill to legalize weed.

The bill Peoples-Stokes has proposed and a companion bill in the New York state Senate would allow people to possess, use, buy or transport up to 2 pounds of marijuana; reduce penalties for some marijuana crimes; make it easier for people to get criminal records sealed for such crimes; and disburse some tax revenue to nonprofits in communities “disproportionately affected” by former drug policies.

Some 800,000 New Yorkers have been arrested on charges of marijuana possession over the past 20 years, according to the coalition of organizations supporting the bill, Sensible Marijuana Access through Regulated Trade or SMART. In New York City, the vast majority of people arrested are black and Latino, advocates said.

The proposed legislation also would make it easier for people to get in on the marijuana boom by creating inexpensive small-business licenses and making them available to people with drug convictions. It’s not fair, Peoples-Stokes said, for people who got in trouble for handling pot in the past to now get shut out of the legal industry.

Sabet’s group has been lobbying against legalization in New York. He said that while the organization agrees with the criminal justice and social justice aspects of the legislation, he doesn’t think it’s necessary to legalize pot to achieve those goals.

Today nine states and the District of Columbia allow adults to use small amounts of marijuana for fun, and 23 others allow certain patients to use the drug medicinally. Now that most Americans support legalization, for many pot proponents the question isn’t whether weed will be legalized. It’s how.

In the six years since the first states legalized adult use, pot advocates have learned to craft more sophisticated ballot initiatives, said Paul Armentano, deputy director of NORML, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that advocates for legal weed.

For instance, advocates are using ballot initiatives to address regulatory issues that policymakers struggled with in the past. An extreme example of the change is California’s 2016 ballot initiative, which filled more than 60 pages and covered everything from rules for marijuana testing laboratories to expungement of marijuana crimes from criminal records.

The California initiative allowed people with drug convictions to obtain marijuana licenses. It set aside $10 million a year to pay for services such as job placement, legal help, and mental health and addiction treatment for residents of communities hit hard by former drug laws. Passed by 57 percent, the initiative’s success showed that voters support justice and equity provisions — or at least aren’t dissuaded by them, Armentano said.

“Not only did that measure pass, but I would argue more importantly, there was very little public opposition raised during the campaign,” he said, referring to the provisions. “Once we saw that, it was clear that people were comfortable with those provisions.”

This year that theory will be tested in more conservative states.

Missouri has four pot legalization initiatives on the ballot this fall; three focus on allowing medical use of the drug and the fourth on recreational use. The recreational use initiative by Total Legalization, a volunteer operation that isn’t backed by national pro-weed groups, also would require prisoners incarcerated for nonviolent marijuana-related crimes to be released within 30 days and would expunge nonviolent marijuana-related criminal records.

Becca Loane, a member of the board of directors for the campaign committee backing the initiative, said her team wants to legalize marijuana completely without waiting for the Legislature to work out the details. “It’s something that needs to be done.”

In North Dakota, a legalization ballot measure also would expunge the records of people with some marijuana-related convictions automatically. And in Michigan, a legalization ballot measure would require state lawmakers to encourage people in communities impacted by the war on drugs to participate in the marijuana industry.

Those communities would be determined by the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, but in essence it means minority communities, said Josh Hovey, a spokesman for the Coalition to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol campaign based in Lansing, Michigan.

Backers of the Michigan initiative wanted to add expungement provisions but decided not to after being told by legal experts that the state constitution requires ballot initiatives to address only one issue, Hovey said.

The argument that marijuana legalization will help poor black and Latino people has been made vociferously in New York and New Jersey, where national groups that back legalization, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, have teamed up with clergy and civil rights groups.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, called marijuana legalization a social justice issue during his campaign last year. New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, also a Democrat, has said she supports legalization because “we have to stop putting people of color in jail for something that white people do with impunity.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has not taken a position on recreational marijuana legalization. His Republican challenger, Marc Molinaro, has said he wants to see expanded access to medical marijuana.

Legal weed backers in New Jersey say they want legislation that — like Peoples-Stokes’ bill in New York — would make it easier for people to expunge criminal records, set aside money for neighborhoods most impacted by marijuana-related arrests and incarceration, and remove barriers to participation in the industry.

“It’s been a massive effort on our part to get it done, and get it done in the correct way,” said Safeer Quraishi, administrative director of the New Jersey NAACP state conference.

Several marijuana legalization bills have been introduced in New Jersey, including most recently a bill from state Sens. Nicholas Scutari and Stephen Sweeney, both Democrats. Quraishi said the NAACP doesn’t support the Scutari bill because it doesn’t include automatic expungements or do enough to promote minority-owned businesses, among other concerns.

Meanwhile the chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, Democratic state Sen. Ronald Rice, strongly opposes marijuana legalization. He said drug use and addiction have led to violence and financial ruin for many people in his Newark district, and that legalizing marijuana will encourage more people to use what he considers a gateway drug.

He’s frustrated that legislation he introduced in February that would eliminate criminal penalties for possessing 10 grams of marijuana or less — but would still fine people for possession — hasn’t gained more support. It’s currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The conversation is about — social justice, some black people can make some money, expunging records and stuff,” he said. “Well, we can do all that without legalizing.”

The NAACP doesn’t support a bill that would only decriminalize marijuana, because such bills don’t do enough to repair the harm done to communities, Quraishi said. “Any bill that doesn’t take it far enough, we don’t support.”

Nearly two-thirds of black, Hispanic and multiracial people supported marijuana legalization, according to a Stockton University poll of New Jersey adults this spring. That was a higher share than support among white adults, according to a breakdown by race and ethnicity shared with Stateline.

Smart Approaches to Marijuana, which helped write Rice’s decriminalization bill, Sabet said, has recently helped defeat or delay proposals to legalize weed in New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Delaware and to allow commercial sales in Vermont. The group also lobbied against legalization in New York, where bills in the past two legislative sessions have had little success.

Peoples-Stokes, the New York assemblywoman, said that she doesn’t think marijuana is a gateway drug or that it’s addictive. Some doctors and public health experts disagree.

But she does see a divide in attitudes toward legalization, she said. “I think it’s fair to say that there are significant numbers of black and brown people that have the old attitude about marijuana — that it’s a negative.”

People need to be taught to think about pot differently, she said. It’s used as medicine, and it’s related to hemp, a crop that’s legal to grow in New York under a pilot program. “The reason why it was considered in a negative way is that it was a reason to lock people up.”

© 2018 Stateline.org. Visit Stateline.org at www.stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.