and get right with regulation, especially as it concerns environmental impacts. But growers with deep, sticky pockets playing up their self sacrifice against a backdrop of the disproportionately high arrest and imprisonment rates of people of color — a history that results in blocking those same people from starting newly legal cannabis businesses — smacks of clueless privilege. It’s a bad look that the overwhelmingly white upper echelons of the industry can’t afford if its members are as serious about increasing diversity in its ranks as its panel discussions on inclusion would suggest. In a recent New Yorker article, Vice contributor and former editor of High Times David Bienenstock said, “Cannabis was my gateway to social justice and to the idea of the government as an oppressive, illegitimate force.” So after what one presumes was an adequate high school education with some mention of segregation, to say nothing of Native genocide and slavery, weed was his a-ha moment. Must be nice. Then again, if realizations about the criminalization of pot got him woke to state oppression, to which our War on Drugs has been an essential tool — I’m desperate enough to call it a win. By any means necessary, right?
Speaking of those oppressive laws, last week Attorney General Jeff Sessions — not exactly a booster for cannabis or people of color — announced plans to make the War on Drugs great again. The Washington Post reported that Sessions “has directed his federal prosecutors to pursue the most severe penalties possible, including mandatory minimum sentences, in his first step toward a return to the war on drugs of the 1980s and 1990s that resulted in long sentences for many minority defendants and packed U.S. prisons.” So does this mean Sessions is going to roll up to the woods like it’s 1995? That’s still unclear. But Sessions did say, “These are drug dealers, and you drug dealers are going to prison.” So now might be a good time for the cannabis industry to cut the self-righteousness and get down to some serious solidarity. After all, Sessions is drawing battle lines and growers may soon need all the allies they can find. l Jennifer Fumiko Cahill is the arts and features editor at the North Coast Journal. Reach her at 442-1400 extension 320 or Jennifer@northcoastjournal.com Follow her on Twitter @JFumikoCahill.
northcoastjournal.com • NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, May 18, 2017
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