The story of Amber Senter, a businesswoman and activist who attended the weekend campout, dubbed Meadow Lands, goes some way to explain why racial equity will be as difficult to achieve in cannabis as it is in the rest of American life.
Senter moved to Oakland, California, in 2014. A coast guard veteran with a background in corporate marketing and graphic design, she worked as an executive at Magnolia, a dispensary, and became a prominent advocate for women of color like herself in the industry.
Oakland, the birthplace of the Black Panther party, is known for radical politics and racial tensions. It was among the first US jurisdictions to recognize legalization as an economic opportunity and has sanctioned dispensaries since 2004. More recently, it became one of the first places to create an “equity program” to support marijuana entrepreneurs who were locked up for pot-related offenses or who come from neighborhoods considered disproportionately affected by the “war on drugs”.
Senter didn’t qualify for an equity permit. But in November 2017, her business partner signed a memorandum of understanding to open a dispensary with Marshall Crosby, a personal trainer in his 50s who did qualify.
A native of Oakland’s impoverished east side, Crosby has lived a hard life. One of eight children, he said he had several bullets lodged in him and had served stints in jail. “I became a statistic in the drug life a long time ago,” he said.
On 31 January, Crosby had some good luck. Oakland put the names of a few dozen equity hopefuls into a lottery and pulled names to see who could pursue a dispensary license. Crosby was among the four winners.
A few weeks later he wrote to Senter’s partner: “I have decided not to work with you. Went another route.” Rather than work with his local partners, Crosby had decided to partner with Have a Heart, a dispensary chain based 800 miles away in Seattle eyeing expansion in Oakland.