“Black And Brown Peoples” Should Not be rich.” The Other People Should Be!
If you prefer, you may choose to listen to the audio of this article narrated by Renaldo McKenzie by clicking this video above.
It’s ok for the dispensaries to sell weed, because they call it Medical Marjuana which is legal. Taking advantage of the law that allows them to do so as they work in concert with politicians to kill the competition or Black and Brown people’s economic activity which is called street weed that they have criminalized and “illegitimatize”. Thereby, affecting the lives of those who can’t obtain ownership of dispensaries without having to meet criteria that the politicians in back rooms with lobbyists and capitalists, bankers and the special interests have made impossible or difficult for those “hippies”, Black and Brown people who don’t have certain ties that dispensary owners have. Such as certain connections, race and entitlements.
What a conspiracy and plot that they have enacted to regulate an activity to drive profits for the few over the many obliterating Black enterprises and wealth in this regard.
This strategy highlights my hypothesis/assumption in fact that “Black and Brown people should not be rich.” Whenever they have a resource or service that seems to be taking off or have potential, it is made illegal until the Status Quo eventually finds a way to wrest control and profit for themselves.
Jamaica has made weed illegal and while they could profit from it as a way to deal with their financial issues, they have allowed the US to apply pressure so as to prevent their abilities to profit tremendously from the drug. Now, US states are decriminalizing and legalizing weed and have developed a strategy with medical scientists working on behalf of their rich investors to make it a purely scientific experience so as to bless it and to ensure profit for medicine and those who can afford to get sophisticated systems to sell a drug that does not require such sophistication. And in America, Black and Brown people like their compatriots in the Caribbean and the world are also affected by this draconian policy and nepotistic strategy that only allows weed sale to be done by a few—over—the—many who never engaged in that activity before.
They have allowed themselves to be tricked out of a “good/service” that would have helped to improve their status and financial position.
Example, look at Colorado; while many states and Caribbean islands such as Jamaica struggled and despite the economic fallout from the pandemic, marijuana sales surged in 2020.
According to Robert Hoban in an article written in Forbes Magazine,
“In January 2021, marijuana sales continued to set records in the state, reaching US$187.5 million” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthoban/2021/05/23/the-success-of-colorados-marijuana-tax-dollars/.)
Moreover, let’s briefly explore what Colorado have done with this US$187.5 million, which could have been done by Jamaican leaders to aid their fledgling country and nascent and struggling economy based on foreign aid:
According to the same Forbes article mentioned above, to answer this we have to examine Amendment 64. “The text stated that Colorado would collect a 2.9 percent sales tax from both medical and recreational sales and a 15 percent excise tax when cannabis moves from grower to seller. The 2.9 percent sales tax on medical marijuana goes entirely into the Marijuana Tax Cash Fund. According to Amendment 64, the first $40 million or 90 percent (whichever was greater) was to go to a capital construction grant program, where schools, districts, and various education providers could apply for money to build new buildings or renovate existing facilities.”
Hoban goes in to explain that “The recreational 15 percent special sales tax, minus a local share, goes to the state’s general fund. A fraction is taken for the Department of Education’s State Public School Fund, and the remainder goes to The Marijuana Tax Cash Fund. Since retail sales became legal in 2012, 16.4% of the Marijuana Tax Cash Fund’s budget has gone to education initiatives. According to the Colorado Sun, lawmakers also set aside $25 million to help school districts set up full-day kindergarten programs.”
But what Jamaica and other weak kneed and myopic vision-less Caribbean and global south countries have done is to allow pressure from the Posh-Industrial countries to control their policies on such things as regulating weed so as to make it legal for them or certain of their interests in effect controlling and limiting the profit from it. Today, Marijuana is still illegal in Jamaica and many other Caribbean islands who we thought were the leaders of the drug and would have been making billions off it. Instead, they spend their times burning hundreds of weed fields thereby destroying a lucrative industry that they could very well strategically regulate to ensure profit for themselves, while the foreign neoliberals give them weapons to hunt down weed sellers in communities who can’t develop or invest in dispensaries and can’t get any bank loans or financial support, while they slowly spend time to regulate the drug and ensure that they profit through an elaborate scheme.
The law on weed is so strategic and the language is carefully worded to suit that strategy. The law allows for the consumption of weed but not the sale of weed by people in the community. The law continues to make it illegal for the suppliers who are not licensed or entitled. License serves as a basis to be selective. Question, how is someone allowed to consume weed but then the way he can consume it is to engage in the illegal activity of buying from someone who is not permitted to have in certain quantities and sell?
In many states that regulate weed and profit from it the law suggests that such consumers may purchase it from a legally licensed supplier and in some instances the consumer must have a medical card which costs over a hundred dollars and may be obtained medically. Religion may not support it but science does, so the status quo can now turn to either religion or science as a strategy to provide a justification for their ulterior motives for personal gain over the many through policy and law.
In fact, many rehabilitative drug programs that require participants to undergo urine tests to ascertain drug compliance, now allow participants to consume weed if they have a medical marijuana or cannabis card that indicates the need for the drug. The card is obtained from a medical facility which casually provides the card even without any the individual presenting any medical problems as long as the price of obtaining the card is satisfied which is renewed yearly at a fee. Such elaborate strategy and plot which is now policy that continues to criminalize black communities that profit from weed, so that it can only be obtained from the few. And such drug programs that engage in such practice opens itself up to scrutiny as their program is now tied to a policy that ensures the state and their lobbyists and special interest profit from Cannabis sales through drug dispensaries.
This Article is available in audio podcast on an episode of The NeoLiberal Round where Renaldo and several others engaged in the discussion. This is the Spotify version of the episode.
Question: Do “y’all” know the cost of setting up or getting a license to set up a #weed or #cannabis #dispensary?
Answer: Approximately 3 million US Dollars And you have laws that prevent people from selling it on the streets. What must they do, these small people in the #hood and in the streets? Set up a #dispensary? Where will they get the finance to do so, #bigbanks… Absolutely not, if banks can’t invest in #blackcommunities so that black people can set up shops and other enterprises, they only give that to the other peoples like the Chinese so that there are Chinese restaurants everywhere at the corners in these poor communities. But black restaurants are at times mediocre and lack financing and they eventually fail or barely make it.
This article is part of a study submitted by Rev. Renaldo C. McKenzie in partial development of his dissertation at Georgetown University that explores the theme of his book: “Neoliberalism, Globalization, Income Inequality, Poverty and Resistance.” The book is published and is available worldwide except in the Caribbean for now at APPLEBOOKS, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, Kobo, etc in all formats. The Audiobook production for the Audible is completed and is awaiting approval from the ACX team.
Renaldo is also a Lecturer at the Jamaica Theological Seminary in Caribbean Thought which he writes: explores historical and current trends in Caribbean and its diaspora. It dissects philosophy and critiques history as it affects Caribbean peoples and their diaspora. It allows us to reimagine a better and more developed and interdependent Caribbean that is not beset by aid or foreign penetration and that is free from mental slavery through the legacy of imperialism and colonialism.
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