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more inspired reporting from Erika Smith:

http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/erika-d-smith/article68730027.html

“Up until that moment, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I found so intriguing about a pot tax in Sacramento and, at the same time, what I continue to find so troubling about other, larger efforts to bring the drug into the mainstream.

It’s not that I’m a hater. I support legalization.

Because of this long march toward saner drug policies, few people in California get thrown in jail for years for smoking or possessing small amounts of weed anymore. The stigma of the drug is going away, too, as more people begin to see it for what it is: a freakin’ plant. Even my aging mother, with her aches and pains and her tendency to trip and fall, now swears by the medicinal qualities of cannabis oil.

But for all of the positive steps that California and other states have taken, there has been unfairness, too. A recent investigation by Buzzfeed, which, in addition to time-sucking, mind-numbing online quizzes, actually produces some good journalism now and then, makes this point all too clear.

It found that “fewer than three dozen of the 3,200 to 3,600 storefront marijuana dispensaries in the United States are owned by black people.” That works out to about 1 percent.

That’s a percentage so low that it should be criminal. Instead it’s a percentage that’s largely ignored by the overwhelmingly white politicians, lobbyists and Silicon Valley investors who are driving the public policy conversations about cannabis, and how and by whom the industry should be brought from shadows into the light.

The people hurt most by the decades-long war on drugs – poor black people and brown people – are being locked out, forced out, bought out and even fearfully opting out of an industry that is one of the fastest growing in the country.

With all of that money floating around, one would think someone, somewhere would keep official statistics on diversity within the industry. But no. ...