Cannabis justice is climate justice
Long a progressive state, California is well ahead of the nation in both setting environmental policies and legalizing marijuana. However, despite its reputation as a cultural and political safe haven for cannabis consumers, California continues to have a serious problem: the unfettered proliferation of big cannabis companies and the industry’s negative impact on rural communities, small businesses and environmental degradation are concerns that fall neatly into the climate justice movement.
Let’s step back for a moment. Even though marijuana has long been used in many cultures for various medicinal uses with numerous studies finding it to be safer than alcohol and tobacco, the use, possession and cultivation of marijuana remain federally illegal under the Controlled Substances Act, which classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug — substances the federal government considers to have no medical use and a high potential for abuse.
The true reason for its illegality is rooted in the War on Drugs, a campaign initiated by the Nixon administration to eradicate drug use through strict legislation and enforcement. The War on Drugs was politically motivated, seeking to simultaneously take down opponents of the Vietnam War and target Black communities by associating drug use with both groups. Its impact lives on today through the continued mass incarceration of Black and Latine Americans.
Beginning with California’s legalization of medical marijuana in 1996, many states have found ways to work around federal law to decriminalize marijuana. This is in response to recent growing popular support for legalization and to counter race-based mass incarceration from the War on Drugs. Although a California ballot initiative to legalize recreational marijuana use in 2010 failed, Proposition 64 passed in 2016, legalizing cannabis for recreational users over 21 and creating a regulatory and tax framework for the state. At the time, the initiative was lauded as a social justice success, overturning a prohibition that had disproportionately hurt marginalized communities. State officials also promised that the proposition would promote and protect small businesses and farmers, particularly Black and Latine businesses.
Far from liberating communities, the rush to legalize cannabis in California was formulated to prioritize profits over people.
Provisions of Proposition 64, including the licensing scheme for businesses to sell cannabis legally and the 15% excise tax, set the state up for failure. A series by the Los Angeles Times following the fallout of Proposition 64 found that instead of eliminating the illegal market, the law resulted in a surge of massive illegal operations. Their reports found thousands of square miles devoted to illegal cultivation centers that take advantage of rural communities, exploiting laborers with low wages, subjecting them to fatally dangerous work environments and employing intense cultivation methods that drain water resources and use banned chemical fertilizers. Meanwhile, small business owners find it impossible to survive in the legal market with the licensing requirements and steep excise tax, especially when competing with large cannabis companies.
It is not a surprise that Proposition 64 resulted in such a disastrous outcome. The rush to legalize marijuana in California had less to do with overturning laws that had deeply hurt marginalized communities, but more to do with the appeal of touting an immediate political win.
Pressure from high-profile state leaders, such as then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, and major campaign funding from groups such as the dispensary-mapping tech company Weedmaps, pushed Proposition 64 over the finish line. While small growers, who would otherwise support legalization, expressed opposition to the ballot measure precisely because they feared its terms would open the door for big businesses to dominate the industry, their voices were dampened out.
The social injustices of today, including our climate crisis, are the centuries-long accumulation of actions by people in power to secure more wealth through the exploitation of people, our natural resources and the institutionalization of these actions in our legal system. Where environmental degradation occurs, labor exploitation is never far and vice versa. As a result, the purpose of social justice legislation today such as cannabis legalization should not be to gain short-term policy wins. Instead, we must seek to understand how our government’s decision-making will impact multiple areas of our society and implement our policies carefully.
The freedom to get high is not an isolated freedom — not when we must occupy ourselves with securing the freedom to work and live safely in healthy communities and on a sustainable planet. As we celebrate Earth Month, the cannabis industry in California is a stark reminder that the systems fueling the climate crisis go hand in hand with the systems driving every socioeconomic issue we care about. So do the solutions.