Greening the Green Rush : How Addressing the Environmental Impact of Cannabis Can Enhance Social Equity and Remediate the Harms of the War on Drugs

The legalization of cannabis in the United States has focused on creating regulated, for-profit commercial markets modeled on alcohol to replace the prohibition regime that held sway for most of the 20th century. Like the fabled gold rush of the 19th century, this new market opportunity has been a magnet for entrepreneurs and prospectors of all kinds seeking to make their fortune. And just like its predecessor, this new rush—the green rush—has left many people behind. Those left behind in the green rush have come disproportionately from the communities most likely to have been harmed by cannabis prohibition and the broader War on Drugs. Poor people and people of color, in particular, who continue to make up a disproportionate number of those subject to marijuana enforcement, have been both formally and informally excluded from the opportunities offered by legal cannabis. To remedy this situation, there has been a push to make social equity a central feature of cannabis legalization and market regulation. Proponents of social equity hold that those disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition should disproportionately benefit from legalization and that the current approach has been engineered to leave such people behind. In this Article we provide a brief overview of social equity and highlight its current emphasis on expanding industry access, criminal record expungement, and tax revenue allocation. We then highlight an issue that is currently not part of the social equity conversation but should be: cannabis legalization’s environmental impact. As we show, there is growing evidence that the commercialization of cannabis comes with a significant environmental cost. This cost is once again born disproportionately by poor communities and communities of color. It overlaps with longer histories of environmental injustice, including environmental racism and the inequities inherent to racial capitalism. As we show, integrating an environmental justice framework into the social equity paradigm holds the promise of addressing cannabis’ environmental impact in a way that remains mindful of equity concerns. It likewise has the capacity to enhance current social equity efforts by providing new pathways and mechanisms to remediate the harms of the War on Drugs