Opinion/Tuttle: Legal cannabis must address social justice

Harrison Tuttle is executive director of Black Lives Matter Rhode Island PAC.

The criminalization of marijuana cannot be separated from the history of the mass incarceration of Black and brown communities, both nationwide and here in Rhode Island. 

Racial justice has not been part of the conversation in Rhode Island’s state legislature, where cannabis legalization proposals from Gov. Dan McKee and from the Senate have been silent on questions of equity and justice. I’m asking legislators who have posted on their social media or joined us in the street chanting “Black Lives Matter” last summer to examine whether your actions live up to your words. We must legalize cannabis. But legalization alone is not enough: we must legalize it in a way that delivers justice to those communities that have been disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and by the war on drugs.

Black Lives Matter Rhode Island PAC has joined a broad array of Rhode Island groups, including the Formerly Incarcerated Union of Rhode Island, Reclaim RI, Yes We Cannabis RI, and UFCW Local 328, in calling for racial and economic justice to be at the core of this state’s cannabis legalization law. It’s not complicated. All marijuana-related criminal records must be automatically expunged. Why should people suffer stigma and marginalization for something that is no longer a crime — and that never should have been one in the first place?

We also must ensure that everyday Rhode Islanders, particularly those harmed by marijuana prohibition, benefit from the legal recreational cannabis market. That means that a dedicated share of the retail market must be set aside and reserved for people of color, working-class and poor people, and formerly incarcerated people, and that the rights of cannabis workers to form unions must be respected.

Rhode Island does not have to conjure a progressive cannabis law out of thin air. New York just passed the country’s most progressive and most racially and economically just cannabis legalization law, which sets a goal of delivering 50 percent of all retail licenses for “social equity license” applicants and created an oversight system to ensure the goal is met.

But we want Rhode Island to do better than New York. We are proposing that half of all social equity licenses for retail recreational cannabis stores — one-quarter of all licenses — be set aside for worker-owned cooperatives. One Black person owning a cannabis store does not on its own repair the harms of marijuana prohibition. Marijuana prohibition has harmed large numbers of people in this state and large numbers of people should benefit from the legal marijuana market. Worker-owned co-ops are the best way to ensure that the social injustice of marijuana prohibition is remedied at a social level.

The governor and legislators have yet to tell us why this should not happen. A legalization law that keeps people saddled with unjust criminal records and hands the legal cannabis market over to Big Weed corporations is simply unacceptable.  

The war on drugs has always been a war on Black and brown people and on poor people. I ask Rhode Island legislators and the governor: what side of history do you want to be on? Are you going to continue white supremacy and the criminalization of Black and brown people? Are you going to continue to marginalize them while saying Black Lives Matter? Or are you going to legalize cannabis and do it in a way that is equitable and progressive?

Rhode Island has the opportunity to pass the nation’s most racially and economically just cannabis law. Legislators and Governor McKee should seize it.