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.”

Every few months for the past four years, Tillis, has driven five hours with her husband, daughter and Cooper’s oldest daughter, making the trip from Rialto to the federal prison in Atwater, near Merced. They’d spend the day visiting and chatting, and guards would let each family member give Cooper exactly one hug. When the visit was over, they’d reluctantly pile into the car and drive home.

But that routine ended a month ago. Cooper was transferred to a federal prison in Louisiana, and Tillis said her family can’t afford that trip.

So, last month, just before he left California, Tillis and crew made a shorter drive to Victorville, where Cooper was taken while in transit to Louisiana. There, the mother stretched out her arms to say goodbye by giving her son a mock hug through a glass barrier.

Then Cooper, 38, headed off to continue serving his sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for conspiracy to sell marijuana.

Life for one

On Oct. 21, 2013, Cooper was found guilty of money laundering, tax evasion and conspiracy to distribute more than one ton of marijuana. Court records say Cooper packed and shipped cannabis from California to North Carolina, and helped to funnel the proceeds through different bank accounts to avoid detection.

There was no allegation of violence and Cooper’s record does not include any violence.

The cross-country investigation that led to Cooper’s incarceration, known as “Operation Goldilocks,” resulted in more than 50 arrests. No one else got a life sentence, including the alleged leader of the network, and many of Cooper’s co-conspirators are already back home.

But Cooper, from Los Angeles, had two prior drug felonies on his record. Despite an Obama administration memo issued just before Cooper’s trial, instructing courts to not pursue enhanced sentences for people accused of non-violent drug offenses, prosecutors in North Carolina insisted on applying a Three Strikes law to Cooper’s case. At sentencing, the judge said he had no choice but to send the then-34-year-old away for life without the possibility of parole.

“You’ve got murderers and rapists and pedophiles doing these horrible crimes and getting out,” said Anthony Alegrete, a high school friend of Cooper’s who served a short sentence related to the North Carolina case and now lives in San Diego, where he works for a boutique marketing company.

“Meanwhile, you’ve got a guy locked up for life when there was no violence, no weapons, no hard drugs – just selling marijuana. That’s just wrong.”

Last year, Cooper heard some hopeful news. Changes in California law have reduced Cooper’s prior drug convictions from felonies to misdemeanors, leaving him with no prior strikes on his record.

Still, so far, a federal court in North Carolina has refused to reduce his sentence.

With few options, Cooper’s attorney is appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. He’s also directly petitioning President Donald Trump for clemency, with many Cooper supporters anxious to see how such an appeal will play out under a President who prides himself on being unpredictable.

Patrick Megaro, an Orlando lawyer who has represented Cooper pro bono since 2014, described the last-ditch bid succinctly.

“I’m just hoping that somebody, somewhere — whether that’s in the White House or across the street at the Supreme Court — sees that this particular sentence is complete madness.”

Others reach out

Other advocates also are taking up Cooper’s cause.

Amy Povah, founder of the nonprofit Clemency for All Non-Violent Drug Offenders, or CAN-DO, included Cooper on a list of prisoners she believes deserve clemency. A week ago, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece, Alveda King, delivered that list of roughly 100 names — including Cooper — to the White House.

King called it “outrageous” for people to be serving long sentences for marijuana. And while she said she couldn’t discuss details of how Trump is handling clemency cases, she said, “I do believe that the President is very genuine about prison reform.”

Povah said Cooper’s case highlights a number of persistent problems with the criminal justice system, from how defendants who refuse plea deals are penalized to the seemingly unequal application of drug conspiracy laws and mandatory minimum sentences.

Cooper’s case also stands out, she said, because unlike other “pot lifers” he wasn’t locked up years ago, at the height of the war on drugs. Cooper received a life sentence for a non-violent marijuana crime during President Barack Obama’s administration, just four months before Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize the recreational use of cannabis.

“It’s absolutely heinous to think that people can now legally work in this field, and invest in it for something that someone else is serving life in prison for – or any sentence, for that matter,” Povah said.

That conflict is central to a documentary expected out in early 2019, which will feature Cooper’s story. It’s also why Cooper’s portrait and letters are included in the “Pot Lifer Museum,” opening soon inside a marijuana dispensary in Ojai. And it’s a reason cited by many of the 15,000 people who’ve so far signed a Change.org petition calling for Cooper’s release.

Lessons learned

Cooper grew up in South Central Los Angeles. His parents weren’t together, and Tillis said his dad was in and out of his life. But Cooper was a happy kid, she said, always smiling and quick to help out.

Cooper earned good grades in school, though Tillis said his teachers sometimes complained about his behavior. He liked to get attention, she said, and she hoped sending him to performing arts schools would direct that impulse toward acting or music.

At Hollywood High School, classmate Alegrete said Cooper was popular and known for his trendy style.

“He was the guy that everybody wanted to dress like,” he said.

Cooper’s love of clothes led him to work at Ross after high school.

But during this period, Cooper also started getting into trouble. From 1998 to 2011, Los Angeles County court records show Cooper was convicted of more than a dozen nonviolent crimes, including petty theft, forgery and perjury. After he was caught with a brick of marijuana and cough syrup with codeine that wasn’t prescribed to him, he served nearly a year in state prison.

When Cooper was released in July 2012, he said he’d learned his lesson. He turned his attention to his fiancée, two young daughters, and making an honest living. He opened a clothing store in his old Los Angeles neighborhood and trademarked a clothing line called “Old Money,” which attracted attention from the likes of Charles Barkley.

“He was changing his life around,” Alegrete said. “He was following his dream.”

Surprise arrest

On Jan. 28, 2013, as Cooper was taking his oldest daughter to drill team competition, federal agents appeared at Cooper’s driveway in Inglewood and placed him under arrest.

The family was baffled, Tillis said, since they believed Cooper had cleaned up his act. Then they learned that one of Cooper’s childhood friends had recently received a reduced sentence by fingering Cooper as one of the people helping to traffic marijuana to the East Coast since 2004.

Cooper’s federal case was headed to court in North Carolina at about the same time that George Zimmerman was going to trial for shooting unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin. With Zimmerman found not guilty, Tillis said she had no faith in the justice system and she begged Cooper to plead out. But Cooper refused to disclose the names of anybody he knew to be in the drug distribution business or say that he was guilty of charges that he still insists were wildly exaggerated.

The trial played out like an echo. Authorities didn’t catch Cooper in the act or find him with cash or weed beyond that one brick in 2009. Instead, the case is a textbook example of what’s known as “ghost dope,” with investigators relying on phone records and testimony from a string of fellow conspirators about actions that previously occurred. They then did the math to estimate how much weed the group might have processed over the years, and they held Cooper accountable for all of it.

Megaro said Cooper felt confident about his case. So, even though he knew the Three Strikes law was on the table, he made the rare choice to go to trial. And Tillis said her son has never regretted that decision.

Enhanced sentence

By the time Megaro met Cooper, a jury had already found him guilty. But Cooper’s mom reached out to the lawyer for help with his sentencing and appeals.

“I liked the guy right off the bat,” Megaro said. “He was a complete gentleman, very polite and respectful. As a criminal defense lawyer, you don’t always get that.”

The life sentence was looming, but the men were hopeful. Two months before Cooper was found guilty, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a memo directing district attorneys around the country not to pursue enhanced sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. It was part of a broader push under Obama to reduce the number of people behind bars for nonviolent crimes.

Megaro said the federal prosecutor in the case, Steven Kaufman, chose not to, requesting that Cooper be sentenced to life even though he could have used Holder’s memo as a rationale to do so. Kaufman, contacted recently, declined to discuss that decision.

In court, prosecutors painted Cooper as a leader in the trafficking ring, discussing the millions of dollars that must have been made. They brought up Cooper’s past criminal history. And they said one of the co-conspirators had seen Cooper carry a gun, though no such charges were ever filed.

Megaro insists Cooper was a middle man, at most, and that there was no evidence he’d used or threatened to use violence. And Cooper didn’t appear to have profited greatly from any role in the scheme, since, unlike some of his co-conspirators, he couldn’t afford to hire a private attorney for the trial.

When it came time for sentencing, Megaro recalls feeling Cooper tremble as he stood beside him.

Transcripts show that US. District Judge Robert Conrad, Jr. told Cooper he was sympathetic to his plight. Conrad said it was “troubling” not to have discretion when it came to imposing a life sentence on a 34-year-old man. But given the mandatory minimums and prior strikes at play, Conrad told Cooper his hands were tied.

Appeals denied

Megaro appealed Cooper’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in 2016 the justices declined to hear it. Still, two decisions made by California voters while Cooper has been in prison serve to give Megaro and Cooper hope.

First, in 2014, voters approved Proposition 47, reducing many drug crimes to misdemeanors. Under that new law, Cooper’s conviction for possession of cough syrup with codeine was downgraded from a felony to a misdemeanor.

Then, in November 2016, voters approved Proposition 64. In addition to legalizing the recreational use of cannabis, the measure reduced or eliminated nearly every marijuana-related crime. And in May 2017, Cooper’s felony marijuana charge from 2009 was reduced to a misdemeanor.

Earlier this year, Megaro went back to federal appeals court in North Carolina and explained that Cooper’s two prior felonies were no longer strikes. But they refused to reconsider his sentence.

In July, Megaro filed a new petition with the Supreme Court. And, last month, they got one bit of potentially encouraging news, when Solicitor General Noel Francisco requested more time to submit the government’s response to Cooper’s petition.

Though Francisco’s request might turn out to be inconsequential, Megaro noted that 99 percent of all petitions never make it to court and that of the roughly 50 petitions he’s submitted to the Supreme Court in his 17-year career as a lawyer, the government has filed a response in only one other case.

“It’s always a good sign,” Megaro said, “when you’ve caught someone’s attention.”

Pleading for clemency

As they wait to hear back from the Supreme Court, Megaro is also appealing Cooper’s case to the White House — for the second time.

In 2014, President Barack Obama announced a clemency initiative aimed at reducing sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. The initiative included a list of pre-requisites for clemency candidates and Cooper checked every box except one — he’d been in prison for just three years, not 10 or more. Still, in 2016, when Megaro submitted the petition, he thought, “There’s no way (Cooper) can get denied clemency.”

The Obama administration didn’t offer an explanation beyond saying Cooper’s petition had been turned down.

Since taking office 18 months ago, Trump has granted seven pardons and commuted four sentences. Most reprieves have gone to figures popular with his political base, such as Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. But in June, Trump moved to release Alice Johnson — a 63-year-old black woman who’d been in prison for 21 years on nonviolent drug charges — a decision that got many prisoners and advocates excited.

“He can just snap his fingers and make it so,” Megaro said, hoping for a similarly happy ending for Cooper.

For now, Alegrete said his high school friend is holding it together.

“He does not believe he’s going to do life in prison at all.”

His family tries to stay optimistic, too. Cooper’s sister said she dreams about the party they’ll throw when her little brother comes home. And his dad hopes to help him land a job and a fresh start where he lives, in Las Vegas.

The only time Cooper really gets down, Alegrete said, is when he lets himself think about the nearly six years he’s already missed with his now 8-year-old daughter, Scotlyn, and 12-year-old daughter, Cleer.

When he missed another birthday recently, Cooper sent this message to Scotlyn:

“Being real and true to these streets snatched me away from you. But know that upon my return (and it will be soon) that our lives will get reunited again and I’ll be the daddy you always wanted.”

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.