Next year, recreational marijuana will be legal in the state of California. Businesses and entrepreneurs have already begun to make plans to cash in on the new market.
Some states that have legalized marijuana have been criticized for blocking people, who are usually people of color, from participating in the legal weed economy.
White people are currently making pot a billion dollar industry in both Colorado & California. There’s also a show centered on a white woman selling weed on Netflix.
And black ppl are still getting arrested for weed amounts smaller than the size of a penny. https://t.co/0ULGI1nQ5V
— X (@XLNB) December 16, 2017
In order to avoid this problem, Oakland announced its plans to help make sure black entrepreneurs get a piece of the legal weed pie a few months ago.
And now, The Washington Post reports that the state itself is taking steps to ensure that citizens who have been convicted of marijuana crimes will still have a chance to profit in the new marketplace.
The state plans to offer a clean state to those with serious felony convictions and those guilty of smaller infractions.
In some cases, those currently serving out their punishment could find their charges could be sharply reduced. For instance, someone who was convicted of possessing an ounce or less of marijuana would have his/her conviction completely tossed out because that amount is now legal.
This means hundreds of thousands of people currently struggling to find jobs because they have been convicted of a crime should be able to get back on their feet and restart their lives.
"We worked to help create a legalized and regulated process for legal marijuana, but we also wanted to make sure we could help — some way, somehow — repair the damages of marijuana prohibition," said Eunisses Hernandez, a policy coordinator at the Drug Policy Alliance.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, there have been 500,000 arrests for marijuana offenses in California in the past decade. The alliance also estimates that up to a million people have reviewable convictions on their records.
Previous convictions have prevented people from attaining good jobs and prospering in the state. Currently, the state allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes which can be purchased at local dispensaries.
Legal medical marijuana patients have to receive a marijuana recommendation from a certified physician and apply for a state-issued, California medical marijuana ID card before they can grow and/or purchase marijuana for medicinal use, per current state guidelines.
Recent data shows that many of those convicted of marijuana crimes in the state have not only been people of color, but young people of color.
There were 5,861 misdemeanor arrests for marijuana in 2016 and a large number of those arrested — 3,215 — were under 18. That's 55 percent of arrests.
The state's new marijuana laws, which make the sale of weed for recreational purposes legal (and which will wipe clean prior marijuana convictions), will take effect on January 1, 2018.
