0:00

You're listening to a Frequency

0:02

Podcast Network production.

0:06

This fall will mark five

0:09

years since this country changed

0:12

forever a little bit. Outside

0:14

the Mod Club, just minutes

0:17

after the clock has struck 12, and

0:20

marijuana is officially legal,

0:22

at least in the Eastern time zone.

0:25

Nobody expected that our government

0:27

would get everything right on its first

0:30

pass. But thus far, the

0:32

Cannabis Act has been a relative

0:34

success, at least for

0:37

the recreational users who took up

0:39

the habit after the date

0:41

it passed. People who were busted

0:44

before then. However, well, that's

0:46

where things get complicated. If

0:48

you've been charged with marijuana possession in

0:50

Canada, getting a pardon has just become

0:53

easier. The federal government announced August

0:55

1st that a bill which fast-tracks the process of

0:57

getting pardoned has come into effect.

1:00

Theoretically, that pardon system

1:02

you just heard about should allow anyone

1:05

to have their record wiped clean. In

1:07

practice, though,

1:09

it has not worked like that. An

1:11

extremely small percentage of

1:13

Canadians with possession charges have actually

1:15

had them cleared. Meanwhile,

1:18

other places that have legalized since

1:20

then have managed to wipe out basically

1:23

every possession charge with a

1:25

few keystrokes. So why haven't

1:27

we done that? Why is cannabis

1:30

in Canada still rife with some of the inequality

1:33

and lack of justice that the Cannabis

1:35

Act was supposed to help fix? Right

1:39

now,

1:39

this Act is up for

1:41

review. And everything from

1:43

gummies to THC count to

1:46

the pardons that matter and the makeup of the

1:48

industry itself is on the table.

1:50

It's happening right now. Canada

1:53

has a second chance to legalize pot.

1:56

With everything we've learned in the past

1:58

few years taken into account. account.

2:01

What will we do with it?

2:09

I'm Jordan Heath-Rawlings. This is The

2:11

Big Story. Akwasi

2:13

Owusu-Bempa is an associate professor

2:15

at the University of Toronto and the co-author,

2:18

along with Tahira Ramatula, of Waiting

2:20

to Inhale, Cannabis Legalization

2:23

and the Fight for Racial Justice. Hello

2:26

Akwasi. Hello, Jordan. Thank

2:28

you for finding the time for us today. It's absolutely

2:31

my pleasure. Glad to be here. I want

2:33

to ask you first

2:35

to go way back with us to 2014,

2:37

which kind of feels like a million years ago now. Do

2:39

you remember what you thought when you first

2:42

heard that a third-place candidate for

2:44

the Liberal Party was planning to

2:46

legalize recreational marijuana in Canada?

2:49

Yeah, you know, I was quite excited. It

2:51

seemed like a long shot, as you've said. He was, of course,

2:54

a third-place candidate. But

2:56

nonetheless, you know, there'd been

2:58

a lot of public support for cannabis legalization

3:00

and certainly no shortage of cannabis use

3:03

in Canada in the lead up to 2014

3:05

and, of course, long before. So I

3:07

thought that this was a very positive intervention

3:10

into both national dialogue

3:12

and, of course, the campaigns that were underway or

3:14

about to get underway at that time.

3:16

And I think referring to it at that point

3:18

as like, you know, a step in the right direction and

3:21

introducing the legislation to people

3:23

is kind of accurate. But

3:25

when the Liberals somehow won

3:27

that election, what did you think

3:29

would happen next based on, you know, all the

3:31

work you've done in this space? Yeah, well,

3:33

I certainly didn't think things would move quite

3:36

as quickly as they did. You know, of

3:38

course, any campaign platform

3:40

has a number of pillars and priorities.

3:43

Cannabis, again, as I said, is

3:45

something that Canadians, cannabis legalization,

3:48

something Canadians had long been in support

3:50

of. And we'd been moving in the

3:53

direction of legalization in terms of the medical

3:55

models that we'd had. But

3:57

I think that, you know, the speed

3:59

of

3:59

at which they moved on the cannabis file

4:02

was a bit of a surprise and a positive,

4:05

in many ways, surprise for

4:07

me. I think at the time, and certainly in retrospect,

4:10

it was something that the Trudeau

4:12

government could see as a relatively easy

4:15

win by getting that past the finish

4:17

line.

4:18

I want to talk about what was and wasn't

4:20

accomplished at that time in just a minute.

4:22

But first, one of the things that I enjoyed

4:24

about your book was the history and

4:26

context of this, which I have to say,

4:29

despite having reported

4:31

and followed the legalization process

4:33

in Canada kind of closely, I had no idea

4:36

how far this went back. So historically,

4:38

how long has there been research

4:41

and recommendations pushing for legalization

4:44

in Canada?

4:45

Yeah. And I want to even go back just a little

4:47

bit further than that. One of the things that I

4:49

think we try to get across in the book, and I certainly try

4:51

to talk about with people generally is

4:54

recognizing that drug prohibition and cannabis

4:56

prohibition in the span of human

4:58

history is really an anomaly, right? Take

5:01

the illegality of drugs, and we took the illegality

5:03

of cannabis for granted as something that

5:05

just was and perhaps was just right. Obviously,

5:08

that changed closer to legalization. But

5:11

for most of the time that human beings have been around,

5:14

we as other mammals do enjoy

5:16

intoxicating substances. And so

5:19

the prohibition of drugs really is the

5:22

anomaly. Now, when we think about

5:24

cannabis being criminalized

5:26

in the 1920s in Canada, the

5:28

span between then and getting to legalization,

5:31

there were ebbs and flows with respect

5:33

to how much of an enforcement priority

5:36

that was. And over time, certainly cannabis

5:38

had been taken quite seriously by

5:40

law enforcement and enforcing

5:42

laws that were set by our government, of course.

5:45

But in terms of the march towards legalization,

5:48

we had work done by the Lidane

5:50

Commission, which kicked off in the late 1960s, 1969, and produced

5:55

reports from 1970 through 73 that pushed not only

5:57

for... the

6:00

decriminalization, but actually the legal

6:02

access and regulation of cannabis. So as

6:05

early as the early 1970s in Canada, we

6:07

had a quite powerful and high-profile

6:10

commission calling for cannabis legalization

6:12

in this country. And they would have been

6:14

reporting to the previous Prime

6:16

Minister Trudeau, right? Justin's father, what happened

6:19

to those reports and recommendations? Yeah,

6:21

well, certainly the recommendation around cannabis

6:23

legalization was not one that was taken

6:26

up. And I think we need to think about this in

6:28

the context of what was happening in other jurisdictions

6:30

and especially south of our border

6:33

in the United States. This is just

6:36

about the time that the United States is

6:39

setting to wage its war on drugs, right?

6:42

Calling drug use public enemy number one. There

6:45

were other priorities, obviously, but those

6:47

recommendations were very much shelved

6:49

and for many forgotten about.

6:51

As we talk about legalization

6:54

and when it first kicked in

6:56

in 2018, we can talk about the

6:59

policy in a second, but I remember

7:01

we had just launched this podcast and we

7:04

did a whole week of reporting around it. And

7:06

one of the episodes we did was

7:09

about social justice and cannabis.

7:12

And we had on a writer who had researched

7:14

this and looked at the

7:16

medical marijuana industry in the United States and

7:18

places like Colorado where they had already legalized

7:21

it.

7:21

And one of the main things she

7:24

told us was like, look, once

7:26

legalization hits, two things are going to happen. A,

7:28

a whole bunch of rich white people are going to make a lot of money

7:31

and B, black and indigenous Canadians will still

7:33

go to jail over this stuff. And I want to ask you, you

7:35

know, five years later,

7:37

does that hold up? Well,

7:38

the first part of that certainly holds

7:40

true. I've done some work with colleagues

7:43

at the Center on Drug Policy Evaluation looking

7:45

at our presentation in the

7:47

highest echelons of the Canadian cannabis

7:49

industry. So directors, board directors

7:52

and C-suite executives

7:54

among including some former police officer,

7:56

some police chiefs, right? Including some former police

7:59

officers. really, you know, really, really

8:01

gets me and I find so hypocritical and

8:03

really offensive. But you know, those who

8:06

stood to reap the highest rewards

8:08

of cannabis legalization in terms

8:10

of direct involvement in the industry have

8:13

overwhelmingly been white and male. And as

8:15

you've noted, some of those have been former law

8:17

enforcers, including Julian Fantino, who

8:19

was chief of the Toronto police. And I would add

8:21

to that, actually, Bill Blair, although

8:24

he did so as a politician, he made, you know,

8:26

his kind of political start to handling

8:28

the cannabis file. And you know, Fantino and

8:30

Blair themselves are responsible for the criminalization

8:33

of tens of thousands of people in

8:35

the city of Toronto, many of those people, black,

8:38

brown and indigenous, for cannabis

8:40

related crimes. So in terms

8:42

of actually directly participating in the industry,

8:45

it has been a largely white male business class.

8:47

The same goes for the investment bankers who set up

8:50

the deals to get investment into

8:52

and build out these companies, as

8:54

well as the people who invested significantly

8:57

in the lead up to legalization. And that's where a

8:59

lot of the money was made through

9:01

investing in publicly traded companies.

9:04

Now, with respect to the casualties

9:07

in terms of, you know, the continued criminalization,

9:10

thankfully in Canada, you know, in the years

9:12

immediately prior to and certainly since

9:15

legalization, very few Canadians

9:17

would have gone to jail specifically

9:20

for a single cannabis possession

9:22

related offense. Right. So we

9:24

were no longer, although we were at points in our history

9:26

incarcerating people and for long periods of time

9:28

for cannabis possession. We weren't incarcerating

9:31

those people for simple cannabis possession

9:33

itself. Now, the police would often add

9:35

other crimes or what we call charge padding

9:38

to a cannabis possession offense to secure

9:41

a greater likelihood of a conviction. But the one thing

9:43

I want to note, you know, we say state this explicitly

9:45

in the book, I see cannabis as a gateway

9:47

drug, not has it typically been

9:50

framed as a gateway to harder drug use, but a gateway

9:52

to our criminal justice system that, you

9:54

know, single cannabis possession offense, if

9:57

someone's convicted of that offense, leaves

9:59

them with a criminal. record which makes it much more difficult

10:01

for them to navigate society and more likely that

10:03

they'll end up back in the criminal justice

10:05

system for other offenses. So to actually

10:08

answer the last piece of your question, the

10:10

data that we have available to us suggests,

10:13

as was part of the intention of the act,

10:15

that criminalization arrests

10:17

and charges for, for example, simple possession

10:19

are way, way down from the

10:22

tens of thousands, on average 50,000 a

10:24

year in the couple of decades leading up to legalization

10:26

to just over about 2,000. And

10:29

other charge categories have not actually

10:31

increased significantly.

10:33

Now we do see persisting

10:36

racial disparities. There were racial disparities

10:38

in cannabis law enforcement prior to legalization

10:41

and some of those hold, but again, the overall

10:43

numbers are vastly reduced, which is positive.

10:46

The lack of inclusion in the industry is not a positive

10:48

thing.

10:49

As legalization was taking shape, what

10:52

kind of discussion was

10:54

there around people

10:56

who, as you mentioned, you know, had already been charged

10:59

and convicted of simple possession and

11:02

had those black marks on their record. What

11:04

was the conversation around pardoning,

11:07

exonerating, releasing, though

11:09

I guess there weren't many simple possession charges in jail

11:12

and, and more importantly, maybe who was

11:14

shaping that conversation in the run

11:16

up to legalization?

11:18

So initially there was nothing. And again, when

11:20

we put this, you've referred to Colorado already,

11:22

when we put this in the context of jurisdictions

11:25

that were legalizing around the same time as

11:27

us, a recognition of

11:29

the harm caused by drug law

11:32

enforcement was part of the impetus for legalizing.

11:34

And so many jurisdictions in the United States

11:37

included mechanisms to clear

11:39

those records of people convicted of crimes

11:41

that were no longer illegal or behaviors

11:44

that were no longer illegal and downgrading those

11:46

were fit. And that was happening, you

11:48

know, at the exact same time that we were

11:50

legalizing. Nonetheless, it

11:52

was initially not part

11:54

of the conversation in the Canadian context at

11:56

all. I had the pleasure of working with colleagues

11:59

Anna Maria and Anna. who's a lawyer in Toronto,

12:01

Stephanie Dijasepe, her law partner,

12:04

Anna Maria founded Cannabis Amnesty. And

12:06

our goal at Cannabis Amnesty was to

12:09

fight for exactly that, the

12:11

clearing of records of people who'd been convicted

12:13

of activities that were no longer illegal.

12:16

And when we got off the ground and we

12:18

started engaging, we were surprised

12:21

by how little attention the

12:23

issue had been getting and how little Canadians

12:26

had considered the issue. We

12:28

were met with a lot of support by members

12:30

of the public, but initially the government had

12:32

said, you know, these pardons are

12:34

not on the table. And thankfully we were able

12:36

to build enough momentum to

12:39

insert ourselves into the broader dialogue

12:41

around legalization. Now we

12:43

didn't get the full expungement

12:46

as we would have liked or even the record suspensions

12:48

or pardons at the time of legalization,

12:50

but the government did table a bill, Bill C-93, that

12:54

provided an avenue for that after

12:56

legalization. So I see that as one of the shortcomings

12:58

of our model is that those harms

13:01

of prohibition and

13:03

kind of real tangible efforts to

13:06

ameliorate those harms for people previously

13:09

affected by prohibition weren't part of

13:11

the legislation itself. It was absolutely

13:13

not a priority for the government.

13:16

How does that compare? Because a lot of your book

13:18

discusses legalization in America

13:20

as well. How does that compare to some American states

13:23

that have also gone legal for recreational

13:25

pot in terms of, you know, just to hear

13:27

them say the pardons are not even on the table, like

13:29

it sounds unusual.

13:30

Yeah, it sounds unusual. In many ways,

13:33

you know, one of the issues that we have in Canada

13:35

is a lack of racially desegregated

13:37

criminal justice data. So although,

13:40

you know, government representatives, Bill

13:42

Blair, Justin Trudeau himself, did at times

13:45

acknowledge their unequal harm, we

13:48

didn't have the vast

13:50

amount of data that exists

13:52

in American jurisdictions to show just how

13:55

racialized our war on drugs had been. And

13:57

therefore, it was easy for our

13:59

government. This is the case in many areas

14:01

and certainly areas of criminal justice to kind

14:04

of ignore issues that existed. And

14:07

so, you know, when we look at states

14:09

that have recently come online, when you look at, you know,

14:12

New York, New Jersey, Illinois, they

14:14

have, as part of their models

14:16

of legalization, built in these

14:19

record clearing and record suspension

14:21

systems. Some of the earlier states

14:23

to legalize might not have done

14:25

so right at the time of legalization

14:28

as well, but processes were in the works.

14:31

And certainly the earliest states to

14:33

do so have subsequently cleared

14:35

those records. And again, I think we need to consider

14:38

that representatives of our government

14:40

were taking what I like to describe as field

14:42

trips, exploratory trips to the United

14:45

States to look at the

14:47

models that were emerging there. And

14:49

unless they had blinders on, there was no way

14:52

that they would not have been made aware

14:54

of or been confronted by such

14:57

schemes south of the border.

15:05

So many of the stories that we cover on

15:07

this show can be traced back to like a

15:09

lack of access to data in Canada

15:12

as a country, as a whole. Tell me why

15:14

we couldn't actually do expungement even if

15:16

we wanted to.

15:18

We couldn't do expungement in the way that

15:20

some American jurisdictions. So I'll use

15:22

the example, San Francisco, the district

15:24

attorney in San Francisco partnered with Code

15:26

for America, which is a not-for-profit

15:28

that uses technology to advance

15:31

social innovation. They struck a partnership

15:34

in which an AI tool was

15:36

developed that could be let loose on historical

15:39

criminal records, identify relevant

15:41

cannabis convictions, and then file those

15:44

convictions, those records with the courts

15:46

for them to be cleared. Now

15:48

this is one smaller jurisdiction, and it's been

15:50

done at the state level as well. Illinois used

15:52

the same model. Our criminal

15:55

records, and especially around cannabis possession,

15:58

lacked specificity, so it wasn't all that bad. always

16:00

clear exactly what drug

16:02

offense an individual has been convicted of. And

16:05

they're also kept in disparate databases

16:08

and sometimes not even in databases.

16:10

They're still kind of paper copy records. So

16:12

the argument that our government made

16:15

is that it was going to be too resource

16:17

intensive and too onerous for

16:19

them to actually take the onus

16:21

upon themselves to identify and to clear those

16:24

records. And so the system that was initially set

16:26

up required individuals who wanted

16:28

their records cleared to go through

16:30

a multi-stage process. It was supposed

16:33

to be free, but it would still cost someone money

16:35

through a multi-stage process to have their records

16:37

cleared. So really it was a lack of kind

16:40

of system modernization that

16:42

allowed the government to say that it would

16:44

be too expensive and too difficult to

16:46

do. Even though, you know, as I've argued, it took

16:49

a lot of resources and a lot of effort to create

16:51

those records in the first place through policing

16:53

and through conviction, of course. Sure.

16:56

Given the benefit that we see those record

16:58

suspensions and record expungements having for society,

17:01

myself and others thought that it was simply something

17:03

the government just should have done.

17:05

How many people then have availed themself

17:08

of this process, onerous or expensive

17:10

as it might be since legalization?

17:13

Do we know?

17:14

I would say in the several years since

17:17

that program has been in effect, the last data I

17:19

saw suggested that a little over 500

17:22

people had successfully received

17:24

a record suspension. There were

17:27

numbers as high as 500,000 Canadians

17:30

who are people in Canada who might have had a criminal

17:32

record for simple cannabis possession. The

17:34

government itself estimated that 10,000

17:37

people would be eligible for the record

17:39

suspension under their system. And

17:42

so, you know, we're looking at a very, very small

17:44

fraction

17:44

of those 10,000 people when

17:46

the numbers are in and around the

17:48

mid 500s. I gather,

17:51

and I'm going to have to get you to walk me through this

17:53

because I'm not sure what it entails, that

17:55

there may now be a chance to change

17:57

this because the legislation around

18:00

is coming up for review. What does that process

18:02

look like? And is there an opportunity here to

18:04

do better? Yeah, so thankfully

18:06

the government has actually

18:09

kind of separately

18:10

already agreed to clear drug

18:13

possession records for all substances.

18:16

I think it's about two years following the

18:18

completion of a sentence. So again, recognizing

18:21

the failures of the war on drugs and recognizing

18:24

the damage that a drug related

18:26

conviction and record causes to

18:28

an individual and those around them, the

18:30

government has actually made moves

18:33

to change the law to allow for those

18:35

records automatically to be

18:37

suspended or they're actually kind of sealed. So

18:40

they're moved away and less accessible.

18:43

But yeah, we do have, aside from that, a

18:45

review of the Cannabis Act that's currently underway.

18:48

It was billed as the three year review

18:50

of the act. It was built into the initial Cannabis Act.

18:53

And the government is mandated to

18:56

examine the impact essentially that legalization

18:58

has had, looking at industry,

19:00

looking at public health, looking at the impact on

19:03

young people and on indigenous people

19:05

specifically. And so there is a

19:07

review panel that has been struck. It has a chair

19:10

and it is currently in the process

19:12

of examining essentially how our

19:14

legalization has unfolded and

19:17

how it's going.

19:18

As you were writing this book and researching

19:20

this in so many different jurisdictions, where's

19:23

our biggest lack of equality,

19:26

I guess, in the justice system around Cannabis? And

19:29

what else could be done during that review

19:31

process? I mean, if you were consulted

19:34

as part of that process

19:36

to share your wisdom, what would you tell the government?

19:38

With respect to the justice piece

19:40

itself, I think the biggest oversight

19:43

was really

19:44

like the lack of acknowledgement

19:46

of the impact that drug prohibition

19:48

and cannabis prohibition had had on

19:51

indigenous, black, and other

19:53

marginalized communities, period. If

19:56

we take a step back here, again, a simple

19:58

possession offense might not see. like something, but

20:01

an individual with a criminal record for something

20:03

as benign as cannabis possession has

20:05

a more difficult time completing their education,

20:08

gaining meaningful employment, increasingly

20:10

securing housing, traveling,

20:12

and just navigating everyday

20:15

life. And that, of course, not only impacts

20:17

upon them, but it also impacts

20:19

upon their family, of course, because they're less

20:21

able to contribute to their family, and they may

20:23

be more stigmatized. And also communities,

20:25

because the nature of drug

20:28

law enforcement, like other law enforcement, is often

20:30

concentrated in poorer

20:32

and more marginalized communities, even though something like

20:35

cannabis is used across

20:37

the social spectrum. And so it has

20:39

caused untold devastation to individuals,

20:42

to their families, and their communities. And there

20:44

was a real lack of acknowledgment, and therefore

20:47

a lack of efforts

20:49

to redress those harms as we

20:51

move towards legalization. So the

20:54

criminal justice piece, of course, revolves

20:56

largely around the clearing

20:58

of those records. And I would suggest perhaps

21:01

also not only simple

21:03

possession records, but other types of offenses.

21:05

I think we could have downgraded the severity

21:08

of penalty for many other offenses.

21:11

But one of the real gaps with respect

21:13

to justice, and as a criminal justice professor,

21:15

I always, at the beginning of

21:17

my intro criminal justice classes,

21:20

have my students think about what justice really is.

21:22

We can think about justice simply in terms

21:25

of crime and punishment, but also in terms

21:27

of fairness and equality. And with

21:29

respect to the fairness and equality, our

21:31

legalization lacked any

21:34

measure of justice because it didn't seek

21:36

to repair the harms caused by prohibition,

21:38

and it didn't seek to provide any

21:41

type of incentive or advantage for

21:43

people who'd been previously harmed to

21:45

get into the industry itself. We've

21:48

seen what I would call a large transfer

21:50

of resources. It costs a lot of money

21:53

to enforce laws. It costs a lot of money to

21:55

convict an individual, and certainly

21:58

if eventually you did make your way.

21:59

into our correctional systems,

22:02

it costs a lot of money to incarcerate people. And

22:04

so we've spent billions of dollars

22:06

enforcing drug laws in this country and cannabis

22:09

accounts for a large proportion of that.

22:11

And so that's money that's not gone

22:13

into those communities, the schools, community

22:16

centers, hospitals, job skills and trainings

22:18

programs. And it's money that's gone

22:20

to bolster law enforcement, which just serves

22:22

to further entrench that marginalization.

22:25

And so, legalization could have, and

22:28

we've seen in the United States, made efforts

22:30

really to reverse that process. In

22:32

addition, as I've said, to finding

22:35

ways to incorporate people into industry.

22:37

How can you do that? I realize it's a big topic. We could

22:39

probably spend another podcast on it. But like, if

22:42

we're looking at this five

22:44

years down the line, what

22:46

can the government and the industry do to

22:49

be more just, or

22:51

did Canada just miss the boat right

22:54

at the start, and now this is how

22:56

it is?

22:57

I don't think we've completely missed the boat.

22:59

I certainly think that incorporating a

23:01

measure of justice at the outset would

23:03

have been much better. But with

23:05

respect to the kind of redistribution

23:08

aspect, what we've seen in many jurisdictions

23:10

in the United States that are taking these things seriously

23:13

is really a three-pronged approach. It's the clearing of

23:15

records that we've talked about, it's inclusion

23:17

in industry, and it's giving back to

23:19

the communities most harmed. We can

23:22

look at the tax figures coming in here. So we can

23:24

look at jurisdictions such as Illinois, New Jersey,

23:26

where funds are set up, some of which take

23:29

a certain proportion of the revenue

23:31

generated from legal sales, so a portion

23:33

of the tax that comes in. And it

23:35

directs that money back into

23:37

the communities most harmed. So it

23:40

can be for the very types of social

23:42

supports and programming that I've just talked

23:44

about. It can go to schools, it can

23:46

go to community healthcare centers, it can go to

23:48

job skills and training programs, it

23:50

can go to crime prevention and reintegration

23:53

programs, again, to revitalize

23:56

those communities and provide them with resources

23:58

that they need to be more healthy. and more vibrant.

24:00

And this is something that, you know, I certainly

24:03

think just should have been done from the outset. We have

24:05

models in the United States, they existed prior

24:07

to our legalization. It's not too

24:10

late for us to do that now. And so

24:12

given the fact that, you know, our kind

24:14

of Perminsial Reinstaller here in Ontario is

24:17

most profitable cannabis business in the country, and

24:19

that our government has been receiving

24:21

a lot in the way of tax from the

24:23

cannabis industry, I believe a fund should

24:25

be set up for a community

24:28

health fund, a community reinvestment fund

24:30

should be set up. And then the second part is inclusion

24:32

in the legal industry now, in

24:34

part because taxes are so high, and in part

24:36

because the perception of how big

24:39

our industry was going to be was a bit misguided.

24:41

Yeah, we thought it was going to be much bigger than it actually

24:44

is. Our industry is certainly in turmoil

24:46

at the moment. So in some US jurisdictions,

24:49

you know, they have different models to incentivize

24:52

or incorporate people harmed by prohibition into

24:54

the legal industry. So dedicated

24:56

licenses, you need licenses to cultivate

24:59

to process cannabis, and of course, to sell

25:01

it as well. And so some jurisdictions have

25:04

special sets of licenses, social equity licenses,

25:06

specifically for people who've been harmed by the

25:08

war on drugs, or who've lived in over police

25:10

neighborhoods, to allow them greater

25:13

access to the cannabis industry. It's a

25:15

highly regulated industry, it's very difficult to

25:17

get into, or can be quite difficult to get into, because

25:20

of the security checks, the financial resources

25:22

that are needed, etc. Right. And so

25:24

providing incentive and support, importantly

25:26

support to potential business

25:29

owners is key. And so those dedicated

25:31

licensing schemes, or we don't have a points system

25:33

here, but you know, prioritizing those

25:36

groups for access. The cannabis industry

25:38

has a large role to play in this as well. This

25:41

is an industry that's operating in a different

25:43

space than many others, again, given the history

25:45

of where it's come from. And, you

25:47

know, we know that companies and

25:49

businesses that embrace diversity

25:52

outperform their peers. And so I believe

25:54

that our cannabis industry also has a responsibility

25:57

to repair some of the harms of prohibition, and

25:59

it can do that in a number of ways through

26:02

seeking to diversify, you know, companies

26:04

not only at the lower levels of

26:06

companies, but also at the C-suite

26:08

and the director level, as we've identified

26:11

a need for. And it can also leverage

26:13

its social responsibility efforts, its CSR efforts,

26:17

to contribute to the individuals,

26:19

the organizations that are

26:22

working to ameliorate the

26:24

negative impacts of the war on drugs. One

26:27

final question.

26:28

We are now just about at the three-year

26:30

review of the Cannabis Act. What changes

26:33

would you like to see happen?

26:35

One of the things that I believe we

26:37

should see, and others have shown

26:39

support for this as well, is a

26:42

expansion of the goals or aims

26:44

of the Cannabis Act. And this models

26:46

actually the regulations and law around

26:49

the Ontario Cannabis Store. One

26:51

of the goals of the Ontario Cannabis Store

26:53

legislation is to promote social

26:55

responsibility with respect to cannabis.

26:58

And I think if the Cannabis Act were expanded to

27:00

include social responsibility and social justice

27:03

with respect to cannabis, then we'd be

27:05

able to see more equitable

27:08

and just programs and funding flow

27:11

from our model of legalization, rather than,

27:13

you know, simply a promotion of public

27:15

health, keeping cannabis out of the hands of young

27:17

people and trying to eliminate the

27:19

illegal market, all of which are, of course, important,

27:22

but they don't acknowledge, again, the history

27:24

of prohibition and the harm that prohibition

27:26

has caused to Black and Indigenous

27:29

communities in this country.

27:30

Akwasi, thank you so much for walking

27:33

us through this. And your book was really insightful. I

27:35

hope everybody who cares about the industry in

27:37

this country in America reads it. Thank you very much.

27:39

It's been a pleasure talking

27:40

with you.

27:43

Akwasi Owusu Bempa, co-author

27:46

of Waiting to Inhale Cannabis

27:48

Legalization and the Fight for Racial Justice.

27:51

That was the big story for more from us, including

27:54

all those episodes on pot legalization

27:57

that we did around 2018. thebigstorypodcast.ca,

28:02

try typing in cannabis, there's a lot

28:04

there. You can also find us

28:06

on Twitter at thebigstoryfpn.

28:09

You can of course write us an email, hello

28:11

at thebigstorypodcast.ca, or even

28:13

give us a phone call and leave us a voicemail

28:15

416-935-5935. Joseph

28:19

Fish is the lead producer of the Big Story.

28:22

Robin Simon is our producer. Ryan

28:25

Clark is our sound designer. Sumandara

28:29

is our research

28:29

assistant. And

28:32

I am Jordan Heath-Rawlings. Thanks for listening.

28:34

We'll talk on Monday.