When cannabis was legalized recreationally in Colorado, there were two main factors that kept communities of color from getting in the game, says Sarah Woodson, the founder of The Color of Cannabis, a nonprofit seeking to level the cannabis-business playing field.
The first barrier was the state’s failure to pardon cannabis crimes or expunge anyone’s record of them post-legalization. Many black and Latino people who may have taken advantage of the opportunity to participate in the legal cannabis industry were already in prison for cannabis felonies like possession or intent to sell.
The second obstacle was a legal stipulation squeezed into the blueprint for recreational cannabis that barred anyone with a felony from entering Colorado’s industry for 10 years.
According to Woodson, these two barriers kept countless cannabis entrepreneurs locked in prison during prohibition, and locked out of the early days of the legal industry in Colorado — specifically, black…
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