By offering low-interest loans to minority communities, New York legislators said they believe they have solved the problem of how to legalize recreational marijuana without forgetting those most heavily impacted by the war on drugs.
But the legal-marijuana legislation being negotiated in Albany could face the same complications that have plagued other states that have added social equity considerations to their marijuana markets years after opening them.
“For New York, it’s the same pitfalls as elsewhere: the licensing part. Nobody has gotten that right in the entire country,” said Dominic Corva, co-director of cannabis research at Humboldt State University in California. “There is a disproportionate, racialized landscape of ownership. White people with money, or white males, tend to get in.”
By setting up a business-development program that grants preferential licensing status to minority entrepreneurs and by mandating that 50% of tax revenues be invested in a community-development fund for communities harmed by previous prohibition, New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act looks to change the paradigm by promoting social equity from the the top down.