{"id":195659,"date":"2018-10-17T10:31:51","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T14:31:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/irpp-policy-options.local\/issues\/making-canadas-cannabis-wrongs\/"},"modified":"2025-04-14T04:40:24","modified_gmt":"2025-04-14T08:40:24","slug":"making-canadas-cannabis-wrongs","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/potestlaunch.irpp.org\/fr\/2018\/10\/making-canadas-cannabis-wrongs\/","title":{"rendered":"Making up for Canada\u2019s cannabis wrongs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Black, Indigenous and other racialized communities in Canada have been disproportionately criminalized<\/a> by cannabis convictions, despite similar rates of consumption across different groups. With recreational cannabis now legal, policy-makers are being urged to consider the lasting harms of cannabis prohibition on certain Canadians and how those inequities might be redressed through creative policies and programs.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaws were enforced in an unjust manner and therefore the consequences of criminalization have not been distributed equally across different social or different racial groups,\u201d says Akwasi Owusu-Bempah, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies the intersections of race, crime and criminal justice.<\/p>\n

He estimates that administering previous cannabis laws through policing, courts and prisons costs Canadians between half a billion dollars to a billion dollars a year. \u201cThe money that\u2019s been used to wage or to fight the war on drugs has been quite literally used to fracture and damage entire communities and to ruin people\u2019s lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bill Blair, the minister responsible for the federal cannabis file, <\/strong>in 2016 acknowledged that the racially disparate enforcement of pot laws<\/a> is \u201cone of the great injustices in this country\u201d<\/p>\n

In Toronto, where Blair served as police chief for more than a decade, Black people with no history of criminal activity were three times more likely<\/a> to be arrested for cannabis possession than White people.<\/p>\n

And data from the United States<\/a> shows legalization won\u2019t fix the racial disparity of pot arrests. After Colorado legalized recreational cannabis in 2014, the rate of arrests for cannabis-related offenses remained three times higher for Black people than white people in 2016. In Canada, legalization could even compound the problem as the number of cannabis-related offences will grow from eight under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act<\/em> to 45 under the Cannabis Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Calls for amnesty<\/strong><\/p>\n

The federal government said on the day that recreational cannabis became legal that it will table legislation to allow Canadians with simple pot possession convictions to apply for a pardon upon completing a sentence. Ottawa will waive the current $631 administrative fee attached to pardon applications and expedite the process by ending a mandatory waiting period.<\/p>\n

The proposed law will not, however, expunge records of simple possession charges as the NDP<\/a> and advocacy groups like Cannabis Amnesty<\/a> have been calling for. Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale says expungement is \u201creserved for cases of profound historical injustice where a Charter rights violation was involved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Owusu-Bempah says cannabis charges have \u201can impact on the individuals themselves but also on their families, communities, and ultimately society as a whole.\u201d The charges can inhibit travel, volunteering and the ability to find meaningful work. \u201cWe\u2019ve got hundreds of thousands of people who have criminal records for cannabis. Those are people who can potentially not contribute to the Canadian economy in the way they could if their job prospects weren\u2019t impeded by a criminal record,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Possible employment restrictions include being prohibited from jobs in the legal cannabis industry. Under Health Canada\u2019s Cannabis Regulations<\/em><\/a>, people holding key positions in cannabis businesses require security clearance, which means a criminal record check.<\/p>\n

The regulations do not automatically bar people who have been convicted for simple possession of cannabis or small-scale cultivation of cannabis plants. The federal minister of health will have broad discretion over whether to grant, suspend or cancel clearances. Across the provinces and territories, hiring limitations vary among distributors from firm exclusion to considering applicants with records on a case-by-case basis.<\/p>\n

Owusu-Bempah notes the hypocrisy of this policy of excluding people with cannabis charges from the workforce: \u201cit\u2019s adding insult to injury to at one point criminalize these people for something that many people do and then exclude them from participating in the licit market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Adding to this racial inequity, white males with MBAs<\/a> are at the helm of the vast majority of cannabis companies leading Canada\u2019s multi-billion-dollar market. The same is true for racial representation in the American pot industry where, in 2017, 81 percent of businesses were owned by white people<\/a>. Lack of access to funds, real estate and regulatory know-how can further impede legal market participation.<\/p>\n

In the US, this economic disparity is now being acknowledged, and cannabis equity policies are spreading across the country. These policies seek to address the wrongs of prohibition by building an industry that is more inclusive of the people who bore the brunt of the unequal enforcement of cannabis laws.<\/p>\n

The Oakland Model<\/strong><\/p>\n

Soon after California legalized cannabis in 2017, the city of Oakland implemented the ground-breaking Equity Permit Program<\/a>, whose goal was to make the industry accessible to residents who have been victimized by the war on drugs. Under this program, half of the area\u2019s licenses for cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, delivery, distribution, testing and transportation are reserved for equity applicants.<\/p>\n

Equity program applicants must also earn less than 80 percent of the city\u2019s average income, and may also qualify for the program in two other ways:<\/p>\n