Battling the racial roadblocks to joining the legalized marijuana trade

By Tracy Jan and Fenit Nirappil June 2 at 6:51 PM

Darryl Hill, hailed for integrating college football in his youth half a century ago, was a successful entrepreneur with no criminal record and plenty of capital when he applied for a license to grow marijuana in Maryland — a perfect candidate, or so he thought, to enter a wide-open industry that was supposed to take racial diversity into account.

To his dismay, Hill was shut out on his first attempt. So were at least a dozen other African American applicants for Maryland licenses. They were not told why.

Now, Hill, who has a long history of helping minority firms get financing and federal contracts, has a new game plan for breaking into the industry — just as a number of jurisdictions are turning to address the yawning racial disparities in the legal marijuana business.

States generally do not track the race and ethnicity of license applicants, but industry analysts and researchers say that dispensaries and the more-profitable growing operations across the country are overwhelmingly dominated by white men.

The lack of minority representation is especially fraught given that research shows African Americans were disproportionately arrested and incarcerated during the war on drugs. Now that marijuana is seen as a legitimate business, advocates argue that minorities should also reap the profits.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/battling-the-racial-roadblocks-to-joining-the-legalized-marijuana-trade/2017/06/02/7321de02-416f-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html