Two Cities Eye Updates To Social Equity Cannabis Initiatives

Cannabis as a business has been booming all over the country. It's seen as one of the hottest investment opportunities for the coming decade. However, for many that have been in the "business" of cannabis before this latest hot trend took off the penalties for being early adopters have ranged from confiscation to imprisonment.

Many communities have tried to account for this by building social equity initiatives into their cannabis licensing programs.  The purpose of these initiatives is to "...allow low-income individuals who have been impacted by the war on drugs in the past to be able to turn their lives around and start businesses in an emerging industry...". Although this sounds like a great idea, its implementation has been sometimes unsuccessful or sometime opaque as to cause confusion and questions by those that try to take advantage of these initiatives.

This story out of LA shows how even when there is an attempt to do things right, errors may still occur that call the entire process into question, while Boston attempts to add greater fairness to a process that has been questioned since it's inception. While these stories point out that there is still a ways to go to make sure that this new emerging marketplace leaves space for those that pioneered it, its encouraging to see that cities are still trying to make this a space where those impacted in the past can attempt to make a better future for themselves.