Interesting look at women of color in the marijuana industry
This new Pacific Standard piece, with the sub-headline “Women across the country are working to build economic empowerment in the fledgling legal marijuana industry for people of color,” covers topics I consider quite important for those who are deeply interested in the social justice aspects of marijuana reform. Here are snippets:
The legal marijuana industry made $6.7 billion in revenue in 2016, according to a January report in Business Insider. This is up from $5.4 billion in 2015, and $4.6 billion in 2014, as reported by CNBC. And while marijuana is slowly but surely becoming a legal industry in America, the wait for federal legality hasn’t stopped the creation of culture surrounding the drug. But largely neglected in the stories about the thriving marijuana industry and its corresponding culture are the women of color who are doing the difficult work of advocacy, accurate reporting, and community creation for users of a long-maligned substance….
It’s the racial disparities in sentencing and the war on drugs that brought Shaleen Title, an Indian-American woman, to the cannabis industry. While an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, Title met a representative from the ACLU who taught her about the starkly different incarceration rates between white and black men for marijuana charges. After that, she got involved with Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
These days, Title is a lawyer who co-founded the THC Staffing Group, a recruitment firm for jobs within the cannabis industry. Title considers herself, first and foremost, an activist. Her arena for change is figuring out how to build economic empowerment in the fledgling legal marijuana industry for people of color. “As important as it is to work on policy, it felt more direct [for me] to help people get into the industry because it was such a rare opportunity to see an industry start from scratch,” Title says….
That idea of a ground floor was also stuck in the minds of Brooklyn residents Tahirah Hairston and Ashley Brooke. The 27-year-old friends both enjoyed smoking marijuana, but never saw themselves, or anyone who looked remotely like them, represented in weed culture. They hoped to find communities for liked-minded young professional women, but didn’t find anything appealing to them. “There were very few,” Brooke says. “And there were absolutely none for black women.”
The pair realized the Google chats they had been sending, wishing for an online community for women of color who smoke, still hadn’t materialized. So this year they launched The High Ends to create, as their website says, “a community of like-minded women who like to roll-up. We want to hear our stories told with nuance and wit from our perspectives.” The High Ends is explicitly for and by women of color. The launch included a series of short videos of women of color explaining why they smoked—for physical or mental health, for focus, for creativity. Bringing the stories of very disparate women together was critical. “There’s Moms Who Smoke and Nuns Who Smoke, which is amazing, but I’m 27 and want a community the same way I can go and find out a skincare routine,” Hairston explains.
The High Ends is geared toward women with regular jobs, who don’t want to hide the fact that they smoke weed. Brooke and Hairston want to reach women who don’t see themselves represented in mainstream coverage of cannabis or in popular culture. Hairston puts it best: “It’s about passing the L, and also passing knowledge.”