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LANETT AUSTIN: I strongly believe that in order to be truly successful in this industry, it has to be inclusive.
I left a Wall Street career to start a company called Jopwell, because I wanted to help corporate America build a more diverse workforce.
Like how Black and white people use cannabis at equal rates, but Black people are about four times more likely to be arrested for possession.
The work she’s doing there is aimed at driving a more inclusive internal culture, while also ensuring communities of color are going to be positively impacted by new legislation.
It’s, it’s unfortunate, but it’s a huge reality that not only myself and others face, I have first-line cousins that are currently not only just incarcerated due to a cannabis or marijuana charge, but also where racial profiling also took a play, a huge part into that.
And more so, you know, there’s so much ignorance and lack of education around stigma and racial profiling and what people really think cannabis is versus what it really is, is what has played that negative impact.
And to the point where I have felt ashamed to talk about my own story and people that I know and loved ones that I am related to being impacted incarcerated, because I’m going to be judged because people judge you for being associated.
Curious as to, despite the cannabis usage rates between whites and non-whites being similar, Black Americans are arrested for cannabis offenses at a rate of nearly four to one.
And when we start to change our mindset and start looking – one is what cannabis really is and bringing education and statistics and facts and understanding that it’s not necessarily that gateway drug that we all were taught to be.
Um, but then also starting to realize exactly, as you just said, that, that statistic that black and white people use it in equal ratios.
And so when we go back historically, and we look at TV shows news articles, documentaries, you see that you see the propaganda of all of the different movies that we can list out that show, if you start using marijuana, then your white daughter is going to fall in love with this Black man.
And so it has constantly been fed into the minds of the people who are behind again policing.
Uh, and second the word marijuana all derived from that negative connotation where the government wanted to make cannabis be skewed very negatively.
And that’s when from early 1920s, when it was legal in the us, and it was named as cannabis and used for medicinal purposes, now became outlawed and called marijuana.
So in this industry to even start with righting the wrongs, right? We talking about education.
So my home state of New York, currently the legal cannabis program to be used, and many States are like this, are called the medical marijuana program.
Social equity has been a huge, huge part and in New York legislation and when they did listening sessions were like talking to the governor and we’re just like, hello.
And though people have good intent, not realizing certain words have been derived out of racism is a start to starting to educate.
That right there, if we were to survey a hundred Americans and say, what does your average cannabis patient look like? I guarantee you, they will not say: between the age of 60 and 70, suffering with chronic pain, or a very chronic illness such as cancer or HIV, they will not say that.
And also, not to mention that their race is not Black, it’s white.
So there are so many different consumers out there, and that’s also so great because there’s so many different routes of administration that people are able to use.
And so education, starting with understanding the basics, right? Understanding the history, understanding that cannabis was legal in America before.
But then you have the education that’s focused on our practitioners, on the doctors on the medical field, because this is again, an area that many medical professionals are very unfamiliar with.
It has not been a part of their traditional education so that we have to tackle: that how actually this cannabis product can help in many medicinal ways.
And even more-so, the current laws that you are making are blocking out the same people that you have targeted for hundreds of years.
And then we take it there a step further to say, all right practitioners, now you are educated and you are now understanding that cannabis is not that gateway drug.
It actually can reverse and wean people off opioid addictions and other things as well as you can now prescribe it to these patients for these reasons, that’s your accountability to do so.
And tours to come see the facility of both the dispensary and to see our grow and manufacturing facilities so they can really understand the laws that they are writing and what really the industry is and seeing patients.
And that was not an easy task.
And, and to give them a placebo of, uh, of a bottle and they were like, I don’t even want to touch it.
Um, they’re walking through the facility, they’re seeing how diverse the teams are, how professional our team members are, how clean the environment is, where there wasn’t one legislature that went through our tour and said to me: Not only is this the best cannabis facility I’ve seen because really it was the only one they had seen in most cases, but they were like, this is the best manufacturing facility I have seen period.
And so that right there is absolutely one of the best examples I have top of mind where they came in with the wall up, didn’t want to touch anything.
How do I become a patient? And I want to be a part of this.
Um, and when we moved to America, again, because of my parents’ profession, we moved into a very predominantly white neighborhood.
I actually – and it really wasn’t until high school where people started to notice and point things out where I couldn’t be a certain character in a show and I couldn’t figure out why.
That’s when things started “aha” moments, and light bulbs going off.
One is like, I got my legacy behind me, but then two was, I need to know a little bit more about myself and so going to an HBCU, shout out to my amazing unsinkable Albany State University.
Understanding that before there was the Selma March that they actually had the March in Albany, Georgia.
And then when I moved to New York and really became interested and had the opportunity to come into the cannabis industry, I really thought, oh my God, this is going to be the easiest job ever.
I said, Oh, this is totally not accessible to anyone that I know who currently uses cannabis in college who’s like, I want to grow.
So 10 years from now, and I’m going to play this back in 10 years to see if my prediction was there.
And you have a variety of small businesses, large businesses, you have consumers, you have practitioners because you had every aspect you can think, built of a variety of backgrounds, of race, of gender, of age.
And so I feel that within 10 years, if things are done right, and the way that Curaleaf is really pushing, with the responsibilities they have through legislation, through our commitment and accountability, with our partnerships, our strategic partnerships happening across the board with smaller organizations, with minority organizations, with us educating our team members, making sure people are developing their mindset as well as their skillset, then absolutely we should have a much more inclusive and diverse community in this cannabis industry.
And that is a partnership that we had to work with our government relations team to ensure that legislation is reflective of our efforts, so that we can even make that possible.
And as those laws have already been written to block out the community members of color, It’s going to be the same way that we now have to break down that wall rewrite the laws.
It’s about who was going to be writing these laws as well as, I don’t think other big cannabis companies necessarily have really understood the space that they are in.
And that is a concern.
But understand, I strongly believe that in order to be truly successful in this industry, it has to be inclusive.
And hearing somebody with the amount of passion and authenticity that you have, and knowing that you’re working at a large organization, that’s focused on it, I feel better.
And sometimes it is looked at and I have been called a sellout, right? I have been called a sellout because I work for a big cannabis company.
That affects me in many ways, because it also targeted and triggers back to my upbringing as I shared with you before.
And so this work is heavy, and know exactly what you said – I take so much pride in hearing that because that is not the stance that other big organizations are doing.
And trying to lift as much as we can and if possible, but the allyship that was in this community is like none other I have seen.
Which is different from season one, season one was, should we talk about race at work? The answer was, yes.
LANETT AUSTIN: I love that question and yes, yes, yes, absolutely.
And so it’s about having a company that already has a foundation of a culture that stands for, we celebrate your race and your differences here at this employer.
Um, but the one that really reflects our culture of how we embrace and celebrate work at, uh, race at work is respect for all.
But these are all resources that are in place to be able to uplift and have a safe place for us to again, discuss our race, to be able to celebrate it.
And this is a great creative, fun way to talk about race at work, where everyone was invited to make a dish that celebrates your heritage.
You obviously can get very classroom style where we also host eat every month open to all of our team members where we don’t just talk about discrimination.
We host a monthly live discrimination training.
Next week we’re hosting our AAPI event where we are talking about again, race again, and how it’s impacted in our cannabis industry, but how we can celebrate it, how we can be an ally.
There’s no more obvious opportunity in my mind that if they want to authentically connect and engage with these communities of color, that historically have been incarcerated and left behind as a result of the war on drugs, this is a unique chance and opportunity to get it right, and to be the leading brand.
Next week we will be joined by the 2019 WNBA Rookie of the Year, Napheesa Collier.
NAPHEESA COLLIER: So really we were just expressing our feelings and how it made us felt.