By Will Jones III
For years, I lived in a neighborhood where the closest store to my house in any direction was a liquor store or convenience store plastered with ads for tobacco, alcohol and the lottery. It was no accident. These stores weren’t serving the community, they were feeding off of it.
I watched neighbors struggle with addiction, families trapped in cycles of poverty and young people surrounded by messages telling them that their value was in what they could smoke, drink or gamble away.
Confronted daily with the predatory tactics of the addiction-for-profit marijuana industry—especially in its targeting of minority communities—I became firmly opposed to any legislation that would commercialize marijuana or regulate it like alcohol.
When the Illinois General Assembly passed the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act to legalize recreational marijuana in 2019, it was touted as the “most equity-centric legalization effort in the nation.” Now, six years later—as in state after state across the country—those promises are unraveling, revealing yet again that addiction-for-profit corporations are just as relentless in blocking minority-owned competitors as they are in targeting minority communities with their products.
Seven minority- and women-owned cannabis transportation companies are now suing the state, alleging they were left behind by a process rigged in favor of larger, politically connected businesses. These entrepreneurs followed the rules, waited years for licenses and drained their life savings while competitors fast-tracked ahead of them.
Finally fed up, the transportation companies are now highlighting a much larger trend within the industry. A 2024 state-commissioned study on social equity outcomes in the cannabis industry found that 60 percent of recreational and medical marijuana licenses went to minority- and/or women-owned businesses. On the surface, that may sound promising. But when it comes to equity in outcomes, the picture is much more bleak. Despite the majority of licenses going to racial minorities, White men, as a collective, saw 78 percent of recreational dispensary sales and 91 percent of grower sales by the close of 2023. Not a single dollar in grower sales was documented as going to Black or Hispanic owners.
These numbers are disappointing. They reveal that the equity language was a smokescreen, not a solution.
The struggles of these independent transporters expose the brutal truth about a cannabis industry that hides behind equity rhetoric while actively reinforcing the very disparities it claims to dismantle.
Illinois’ cannabis industry is proving exactly what my organization, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM), has warned about for years: legalization is not a solution to past social inequities, it is a setup. For decades, we have been sold systems that promised opportunity but delivered exploitation; from redlining in housing to inequities in education and criminal justice. The cannabis industry is now running the same playbook, repackaged in progressive language.
In Illinois and across the country, legalization has become a bait-and-switch: it promises reparative justice but delivers market consolidation and regulatory chaos. Seven years after Shanita Penny, the president of the Minority Cannabis Business Association, warned, “Time is really up on selling your business dream as a social justice movement,” minority business owners have echoed the same sentiment almost verbatim.
As Illinois State Representative La Shawn Ford, who represents parts of Chicago’s West Side, put it, “The truth is the dream of being a cannabis business owner in Illinois is falling far short.”
It doesn’t matter whether the substance is alcohol, tobacco or marijuana; addiction-for-profit recreational drug industries have only one goal: to make as much money as possible, regardless of who is harmed in the process.
It’s time to expose the facade, face reality and hold Big Marijuana accountable.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
The Prohibition of cannabis and Reefer Madness are only pushed and believed by a very small, lunatic-fringe minority of irrational looney-tune Holier Than Thou types that are on a never ending little personal moral-crusade and witch-hunt against relatively benign cannabis and it’s consumers. The rest of us sane, rational, normal Americans just laugh our butts off at and mock utterly desperate lying prohibitionists and their ridiculous Reefer-Madness-Rhetoric as the comedy show they truly are!
The “War on Cannabis” has been a complete and utter failure. It is the largest component of the broader yet equally unsuccessful “War on Drugs” that has cost our country over two trillion dollars.
Instead of The United States wasting Billions upon Billions more of our yearly tax dollars fighting a never ending “War on Cannabis”, lets generate Billions of dollars, and improve the deficit instead. Especially now, due to Covid-19. It’s a no brainer.
The Prohibition of Cannabis has also ruined the lives of many of our loved ones. In numbers greater than any other nation, our loved ones are being sent to jail and are being given permanent criminal records. Especially, if they happen to be of the “wrong” skin color or they happen to be from the “wrong” neighborhood. Which ruin their chances of employment for the rest of their lives, and for what reason?
Cannabis is much safer to consume than alcohol. Yet do we lock people up for choosing to drink?
Let’s end this hypocrisy now!
The government should never attempt to legislate morality by creating victim-less cannabis “crimes” because it simply does not work and costs the taxpayers a fortune.
Cannabis Legalization Nationwide is an inevitable reality that’s approaching much sooner than prohibitionists think and there is nothing they can do to stop it!
Legalize Nationwide Federally Now! Support Each and Every Cannabis Legalization Initiative!