The state of New Jersey can boast that they’ve handed out 56 licenses. But legislators feel it’s a disgrace that none were ever granted to black-owned enterprises.
Representative Donald M. Payne, Jr. issued a statement delineating his disapproval. “I am outraged to hear that Black-owned businesses have been shut out of the state’s cannabis marketplace,” he says.
States across the U.S. have gleefully boasted their social justice provisions will make equity a priority. Like many of those states, in creating its cannabis industry, social reform was supposedly built into Jersey’s structuring.
But, in many states, no one’s yet to solidify the move. People of color remain at a disadvantage when it comes to getting their foot into legal cannabis.
John E. Harmon is the founder, CEO, and President of African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey. He told High Times working with Jersey governors Christie and Murphy over a decade, that by now, “somebody should have figured out the process. They knew—it’s well-documented—that Black and brown people had been severely penalized from this industry. So New Jersey has not put a policy in place like New York to include minority women. Had that policy been in place, the equity would have been clearly understood […]”
In his argument, Harmon notes a detrimental Cannabis Regulatory Commission caveat. It requires license applicants have site control while their applications get reviewed.
For hopefuls to hold onto a site without operations means carrying the expense of the property. This while the state goes through the extensive process of license approval. And these expenses cannot be used as business deductibles. The federal status of cannabis makes that an impossibility.
The situation irks Representative Payne. “Black users are four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white users, even though overall use for both groups is almost the same. New Jersey has a chance to correct this inequality and allow people abused by the system to finally benefit from it with a fair distribution of cannabis business licenses.
“Instead, we are seeing the same inequality with these licenses that we see in marijuana arrests. Governor Phil Murphy promised that the state’s cannabis industry would right the wrongs of the past as it concerns social justice. Now, New Jersey needs to uphold this promise. I join the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey in their outrage that this inequality continues to plague our state, our society, and our country.”
In another glitch among its initiatives, New Jersey planned for an online market for adult-use cannabis. That platform is nowhere near ready for its original deadline of late February 2022. That’s another nail in the coffin disenfranchised weed entrepreneurs hoped to be advantageous.
Harmon warns, “The clock is ticking.” He feels it’s fruitless to wait on the government and the CRC. All concerned parties must make their point clear: Someone needs to put inequity in the cannabis business at the top of their to-do list.
