Unfortunately, the marijuana industry—comprised almost entirely of white men—has targeted communities of color, despite promises to the contrary. This should, perhaps, not be surprising: the tobacco and alcohol industries have long targeted such communities. One Johns Hopkins study revealed that predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore were eight times more likely to have carry-out liquor stores than racially mixed or white neighborhoods.[1] And tobacco companies have historically placed larger amounts of advertising in African-American publications, exposing African-Americans to more cigarette ads than whites,[2] and have marketed more harmful and more addictive products to them.[3]
The marijuana industry is already copying the Big Tobacco playbook in Colorado. There, marijuana use is up overall. And in Denver, pot businesses are concentrated in lower-income, neighborhoods of color—one lower-income neighborhood has a pot business for every 47 residents.[4]
Moreover, in the two years after Colorado legalized marijuana, the number of Hispanic and black kids arrested for marijuana-related offenses rose 29 and 58 percent, respectively. In the same period, the number of white kids being arrested for identical crimes dropped eight percent. [5]
[1] Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Off-Premises Liquor Stores Targeted to Poor Urban Blacks. 2000.
[2] CDC. African Americans and tobacco use. CDC, 17 Aug. 2016; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Tobacco Use Among U.S. Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups—African Americans, American Indians and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanics: A Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office on Smoking and Health, 1998.
[3] CDC. African Americans and tobacco use. CDC, 17 Aug. 2016; National Cancer Institute. The Role of the Media in Promoting and Reducing Tobacco Use. Smoking and Tobacco Control Monograph No. 19, NIH Pub. No. 07-6242, June 2008; Gardiner PS. The African Americanization of Menthol Cigarette Use in the United States. Nicotine and Tobacco Research 2004; 6:Suppl 1:S55-65; Ton HT, Smart AE, Aguilar BL, et al. Menthol enhances the desensitization of human alpha3beta4 nicotinic acetylcholine receptors. Mol Pharmacol 2015;88(2):256-64; Smokefree.gov. Menthol Cigarettes. Bethesda (MD): U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, 2015.
[4] Migoya, David, and Baca, Ricardo. “Denver’s pot businesses mostly in low-income, minority neighborhoods”. The Denver Post, 2 Jan. 2016.
[5] Colorado Department of Public Safety, Division of Criminal Justice, Office of Research and Statistics. Marijuana Legalization in Colorado: Early Findings. Denver, Mar. 2016.