When Luxury Leaf opens next year, it will be Missouri’s first black-owned dispensary.
Voters first approved medical weed in 2018. The state’s first dispensary hit the market in October 2020. Since, 191 dispensaries launched throughout the state, according to The Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association. Of that number, none were owned by a black businessperson.
Adrienne Scales-Williams breaks that mold, entering one of the most unsettling inequities of the cannabis industry: the multi-billionaire business, born on the shoulders of disenfranchised communities and a black-market business in those communities, has become a thriving business for whites and other non-blacks, individuals who easily navigated the red tape of starting a legalweed business.
Fortunately, Scales-Williams is too optimistic to see any negative in her achievement with Lucky Leaf. For her, getting into the cannabis industry was a “no-brainer.”
“I am an advocate for alternative medicines and want to be a part of a culture that promotes plants in healing. I want to invest in something so innovative and great for patients. I want patients to feel healing when they enter the dispensary space. I will also offer virtual classes to keep education at the forefront of this industry. In addition, it was important to have this business in the city of St. Louis, to closely engage the community in a very direct way.”
The entrepreneur knows success. She’s the owner of St. Louis’ Document Imaging Systems of St. Louis, Inc. The company was number 23 on The St. Louis Business Journal’s list of largest minority-owned businesses in 2020.
The company’s flexibility demonstrates Scales-Williams’ business acumen. Document Imaging was a printing business before shifting focus to casino-strategic sourcing.
“Any business requires you to be agile and embrace technology,” Scales-Williams says. “The cannabis industry is forcing our traditional medical structures to reconsider and to embrace this technology of healing.”
Scales-Williams got her license for Luxury Leaf after an expensive and lengthy process, as well as passing a state commencement.
Marijuana Business Daily reports 80 percent of all cannabis businesses are owned by whites. Meanwhile, blacks and Hispanics barely make up 10 percent of combined weed businesses. Missouri is among 34 states to legalize medical toking. Fifteen states have passed recreational weed.
The growth of the industry is forcing Missouri leaders to recognize the growing numbers of people who have no issue with legalized weed. Legal Missouri 2022 is collecting signatures for a bill that approves adult weed use. They hope to get a measure on next year’s ballot.
Legal Missouri needs at least 170,000 valid signatures from six of eight congressional districts to get the initiative on ballots. The group’s campaign manager, John Payne, believes not only will they accomplish that goal but will see the measure pass. In 2018, medical marijuana use took in 66 percent of registered voters.
Congressional Democrats also state one of their objectives in 2022 is to decriminalize marijuana. A memo out of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus states, [W]”e are closer than ever to bringing our cannabis policies and laws in line with the American people.”
