America @ The Crossroads
By: Keith A. Trotter
Tags: Social Justice, Marijuana, Marijuana Legalization, Criminal Justice Reform, Economic Development

America @ The Crossroads

Searching for solutions to a problem older than America

America has a chronic issue. It has divided White people to the point of war. It assassinated a President, undermined and destroyed reconstruction, created the Klan, and gave us Jim Crow. It spawned the Civil Rights Era, assassinated more of the best and brightest among us, provided the opening needed for a foreign adversary to possibly affect the outcome of a presidential election, and most recently has birthed 36 days of mostly peaceful, but sometimes violent protests over the continued deaths of unarmed People of Color by the police. Racism and Inequality is equally native and antithetical to the American experience and it is way past time for us to stop playing the Jeffersonian game of racial Kick the Can.

Equality has become a zero-sum political game of Win-Lose

But what to do? The problem seems to have roots that go back so far and have traveled so deep that no one can see or find them all. No one alive is responsible for the beginning of the problem and so no one wants the perceived shame of owning it so we can end it. The issue is that there are some in the White community who believe that for POC to be equal, Whites must become less. Equality has become a zero-sum political game of Win-Lose and nothing less than the healing of our nation is at stake.

So how do we collectively pull together a plan that allows us to simultaneously deal with the issues of racism and inequality while protecting the very real fear that some have of losing what little they have to another failed social engineering project that historically has only exacerbated the problem? I’m glad you asked.

Two words, Economic Development. More specifically the development of a fully legal industry based on Marijuana and its adjacent products.

Here me out on this. Let’s start with some hard facts:

1. It’s estimated that the illegal drug industry is a $150B enterprise. By comparison GM only made $147B in 2019.

2. It is estimated that we spend $51B a year fighting the “War on Drugs.”

3. Over the last 2 years, due to the trade war, US taxpayers have shelled out over $28B in farm bailout dollars, while cutting $5B from programs like SNAP which disproportionately affects communities of color

4. There is effectively no tax base in communities of color because they rent from landlords who live and pay taxes in other communities.

5. Without an effective tax base, you have under-performing schools, little political power and even less chance of success.

That’s a lot of B’s and communities of color, aren’t seeing a dime of it. But what if they could? What if we legalized marijuana and designated it a 100% Minority Business Enterprise set aside? What if we created a Not-for-Profit Trade Board that in conjunction with the Federal Government created a standardized set of rules governing the licensing, growth, development, distribution, and sale of the products? Remember all those B’s? Wouldn’t an enterprise with that type of global potential be beneficial, not only to communities of color, but to the nation at large? Consider these benefits:

Economic Development in communities of color would be self-sustaining At the Trade Board level 75% of all revenues would be pledged/invested in programs for

a. Real Estate purchases, so we can own the communities we live in

b. Building community banks

c. Hospitals & clinics

d. Fully funding our Public Schools and supporting Charter initiatives

e. Community policing programs that could offer incentives to our officers for reductions in crime as well as reductions in complaints

f. Back to School programs

g. Trade training programs

h. Mental Health and Substance abuse counseling

i. Angel/Micro lending investments to continue to encourage new business development

3. Remember the farmers? What if they were leasing a portion of their land for growers? This also means dollars for:

a. Machinery

b. Transportation

c. Fertilizer

d. Storage

e. Seeds

I could keep going, but I think you get he picture. No one loses. Everyone wins, I would even dare say that we could begin to spark some much-needed economic growth while creating a global industry. If we set aside our preconceived and mostly false notions about marijuana and look at it as a tool that we could use to kick start the long overdue economic development of our communities of color, we can beat the diseases of racism and inequality. We can all win and win big. We might even win so much; we just get sick of winning. One can dream.