To judge by DeAngelo’s illustrious career in cannabis, the officer’s warning had the opposite effect. When a high school sports injury left him depressed and in pain, his brother passed him a joint and one hit turned him into a cannabis believer. DeAngelo never looked back. His lengthy cannabis resume includes decades working on voter initiatives to legalize cannabis, serving as a founding board member for the California Cannabis Industry Association, and co-founding Harborside, one of the world’s largest cannabis retailers. As legal cannabis gains ground, DeAngelo’s new nonprofit Last Prisoner Project has been instrumental in reminding the industry that we can’t leave cannabis prisoners behind.
“Our mission is to get all cannabis prisoners out of jail with their records expunged,” says DeAngelo. “We raise money from the cannabis high net-worth donors, industry leaders and small donors–and it’s going to take a lot. Getting even one person out of prison takes thousands of legal hours. The prison industrial complex has done a very good job making it really hard for people to get out.”
But Last Prisoner Project is about more than just fundraising. Uniting the industry behind restorative justice requires delicate maneuvering between the two extremes of the cannabis world: industry elites and the carceral labyrinth. For DeAngelo, the work ultimately comes down to diplomacy. “The cannabis industry is dominated by a lot of individualistic, creative types that like to do things their own way,” he says. “So getting all of these personalities to work together- that’s where you need the underlying diplomacy skills.”