“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.
Clip the towel under the door. Open the window. And hide the bong.
For decades, college students have found ways to mask the pungent smell of marijuana smoke on campus. However, Wanda James didn’t always feel the need to hide. A 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Ms. James sat on the steps of her dorm and rolled joints with her friends.
It would be decades before Colorado became one of the first two states in the country to legalize recreational cannabis, but on campus, James wasn’t worried.
“The worst thing that would happen is that they would tell us to put it away or they could take it away from us, and that was the end of it,” Ms. James recalled telling campus police.
40 years later: Ms. James, a former Marine lieutenant, is a member of her alma mater’s Board of Regents — and a prominent advocate for racial justice in the changing cannabis landscape.
It wasn’t until after college that Ms. James realized she had been living in a kind of alternate reality with her cannabis use. She learned how the United States’ marijuana laws have resulted in black Americans being sentenced to prison at higher rates than white Americans despite nearly equal consumption rates, which led her to the mission to which she has dedicated her life.
Ms. James, 60, has owned several cannabis businesses over the years, including two dispensaries and a grocery company, which gave her a platform to speak out about what she sees as racial injustices in the industry. She was a pioneer in calling for the legalization of cannabis at state and federal levels. Federal scientists have recommended in recent reports easing restrictions on marijuana, a so-called Schedule I drug like heroin, and reclassifying it, along with ketamine and testosterone, as a Schedule III drug.
“Wanda is a force of nature!” said Senator John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, who appointed Ms. James to a task force that developed recommendations for regulating marijuana in Colorado. These recommendations became the model for the two dozen states that have since legalized the sale of cannabis in recreational dispensaries.
But as more states have legalized the sale of recreational cannabis, prompting larger companies to get involved in an industry that is becoming increasingly mainstream, Ms. James is one of the few Black women in leadership positions. Several smaller cannabis companies, largely run by people of color and women – many of whom were caregivers who saw the benefits of medical marijuana for the people they cared for – have been forced out of business, Ms. James said.
According to a report from MJBiz Daily, a publication that covers legal and financial news related to cannabis, the proportion of women in cannabis companies fell from 22.2 percent in 2022 to 16.4 percent in 2023, with racial minorities only make up 18.7 percent of the owners.
These days, Ms. James is pushing not only for broader legalization of cannabis—recreational use of the plant is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia, but illegal at the federal level—but also for reform of the industry to ensure more people are taking notice like her Fill leadership positions.
She believes that by becoming a dispensary owner and now taking a leadership role in an industry whose policies have historically harmed black and Latino Americans, she could regain some power for minorities who are under attack in communities where marijuana is used -Arrests take place. In New York, for example, state cannabis regulators documented a staggering 1.2 million marijuana arrests over a 42-year period, disproportionately of Black and Latino Americans.
“There is so much going on in the industry that there is no promising place right now that sees diversity as a positive thing,” she said. “We’re trying to find ways to help.”
Ms. James grew up in rural Colorado on a ranch full of dogs, rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs. Her father, a single father and Air Force veteran, was a cowboy and they often rode horses together.
The love for caring for animals is unbroken. Ms James has fostered more than 30 dogs over the years, including some she found on the streets. Like her father, she joined the military and was the first black woman to graduate from the University of Colorado’s ROTC program. She served four years in the Navy before moving to Los Angeles, where she worked for two Fortune 100 companies. She also met her husband, Scott Durrah, then a property manager in West Hollywood and also a marijuana smoker, with whom she opened several restaurants in Colorado and California. Ms. James’ Rottweiler Onyx was the maid of honor at her wedding.
As the couple built their businesses, the country felt the long-term effects of President Ronald Reagan’s harsh cannabis policies. Reagan’s Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 – the year Ms. James graduated from college – “flooded the federal system with people convicted of minor and nonviolent drug offenses,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In 2007, nearly 800,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession, according to the FBI. About 80 percent of those arrested were black. .
“It was the demographic least likely to have a family friend who was a lawyer and least likely to have parents or family money to get them out of the situation that night,” Ms. James said.
These statistics remained at the forefront of Ms. James’s mind as she struggled to run a cannabis company and worked behind the scenes in politics.
In 2008, Ms. James managed the successful congressional campaign of Jared Polis, a Democrat who was elected governor of Colorado in 2018. The following year, she and Mr. Durrah opened the Apothecary of Colorado, a medical cannabis dispensary, the first African Americans to own a legal dispensary in the United States. They later closed the medical dispensary and opened an edibles company, Simply Pure, which became Simply Pure Denver, a recreational dispensary, in 2015.
“She’s a trailblazer,” said Tahir Johnson, a mentee of Ms. James. “When you think of a strong black woman, that’s exactly what she embodies.”
As she became a businesswoman and marijuana policy shaper, she had a personal reference point that she often drew on in her work: her half-brother, who was in prison for crimes including marijuana possession.
Ms. James has chronicled her journey in short documentaries produced by The Atlantic and Yahoo, and in 2018 she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry by High Times Magazine. She has used her platform to call for federal legalization of cannabis, which would help dispensary owners put some of the money they paid in taxes back into their businesses, increasing the likelihood of “generational wealth.” create, she said; Because recreational cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, unlike non-cannabis businesses, dispensary owners cannot write off basic expenses like staff salaries.
And she uses her network to bring about change. Starting with Mr. Johnson, her mentee, Ms. James is licensing the Simply Pure name to young entrepreneurs in the industry who come from communities harmed by racial disparities in marijuana arrests.
Mr. Johnson said he had been arrested three times for marijuana possession and he was “honored” that Ms. James had chosen him to carry on her legacy. He plans to open Simply Pure Trenton soon.
“The fact that she trusted me to take on this role in the next phase of the organization means a lot to me,” he said.
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2024-01-25 05:00:23
www.nytimes.com
