Many Black voters want medical marijuana in MS. But will the new industry support them?
As Mississippians prepare to head to the polls Tuesday to vote on medical marijuana, many Black voters are excited to support Initiative 65.
But some say the Medical Marijuana 2020 campaign hasn’t prioritized outreach to them, and that Black Mississippians could miss out on potential business opportunities in medical marijuana.
The campaign has kept a tight focus on how it could help patients of all races, rather than positioning medical marijuana as a vehicle for communities harmed by punitive drug laws to get new opportunities for entrepreneurship and economic development.
Natalie Jones Bonner, a Black entrepreneur who runs a Biloxi business selling CBD products, told the Sun Herald that’s been her experience.
As the head of the Mississippi chapter of Minorities for Medical Marijuana, she attended a meeting in Jackson last April to learn about the business of medical marijuana. While chatting with other attendees, she said it was important to ensure a statewide program created business opportunities for people of color, given that Black Americans have a disproportionately affected by the country’s drug laws — they are about four times likelier than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession, though usage is similar across races.
The other attendees told her that it wasn’t the time to talk about racial justice alongside medical marijuana.
“Natalie, let’s get the Initiative passed first,’” she recalled them saying. “If we start talking about social equity and inclusion, it’s going to scare people.”
Jones Bonner’s experience reflects a larger pattern in the campaign for Initiative 65.
On the eve of Election Day, Jones Bonner told the Sun Herald that she understood the strategy. Avoiding any connection to criminal justice reform or redress for policies that have harmed people of color was probably the correct choice, if Initiative 65 is to have any hope of passing in a conservative state like Mississippi, she said.
But she doesn’t think it was the right choice.
“I think that if you don’t do social inclusion in the beginning, that it will be a long haul to try to get it in after the fact,” she said. “Because then it becomes secondary.”
Still, Jones Bonner wants Initiative 65 (and not the Legislature’s more restrictive alternative, Initiative 65A) to pass.
Polls show Mississippians of all races largely support the concept of medical marijuana. One poll last year found that 67% of respondents said they approved of medical marijuana, and support was especially strong among Black voters and Democrats.
Will Initiative 65 later help in marijuana arrests?
Black voters who support Initiative 65 told the Sun Herald their key motivator is knowing people who might benefit from medical marijuana.
Some also expressed hope that legal medical marijuana would reflect a gradual liberalization of attitudes toward drugs in general, which could lead to the end of harsh punishments for marijuana possession — like the life sentence imposed on Tameka Drummer, a Black mother of four serving a life sentence for possession of less than two ounces of marijuana.
But the group Mississippians for Compassionate Care, the leaders of the push for Initiative 65, have avoided tying it to other possible reforms and instead have emphasized their conservative Republican bona fides, even producing mailers asking voters to “JOIN PRESIDENT TRUMP” in supporting medical marijuana. The website includes a page titled “Republican Support for 65.”
Most of the people who have participated in press conferences and events organized by Mississippians for Compassionate Care, like one in Gulfport in September, are white. The group has produced testimonial videos of people explaining the potential medical benefits of cannabis; only one speaker, Jeanne Tate, chairperson of the Mississippi Sickle Cell Foundation, is a Black Mississippian.
Jamie Grantham, communications director for Medical Marijuana 2020, said medical marijuana is “a people issue.”
“It doesn’t matter the color of your skin,” she said. “We’re all human and we all have the propensity for one of these debilitating conditions or we all know someone with one of these debilitating conditions.”
Jeffrey Hulum III, head of the Gulfport nonprofit Extend a Hand — Help a Friend, registered voters earlier this year and has helped people get to the courthouse for in-person absentee voting. He said support for Initiative 65 among Black voters he’s talked to has seemed organic.
“We never hear from the people who actually push the bill,” Hulum said. “It’s a grassroots effort.”
Medical benefits of cannabis
Carricka Thomas, a nurse practitioner who owns a clinic in Gulfport, said she hasn’t always been a supporter of medical marijuana. But in the last few years, her work took her into the homes of elderly people and veterans dealing with chronic pain. She also saw firsthand the negative side effects of opioids.
“I do see where it could help people with chronic pain, cancer patients, people with end-stage AIDS,” she said.
Barbara Weeks, 79, voted absentee at the Harrison County courthouse last week. She cast her vote for 65.
“If it’s going to help the sick people, I’m for it,” she said. “And if I don’t have to take it, I don’t have to worry about it.”
Initiative 65 lists 22 qualifying conditions under which a patient can seek a doctor’s approval to obtain medical marijuana, plus conditions “of the same kind or class.” Sickle cell disease, which affects about one in 365 Black Americans, is one of them.
By including sickle cell disease as a qualifying condition, Initiative 65 would set Mississippi apart from other southern states that have legalized medical marijuana. Arkansas and Florida don’t allow sickle cell disease sufferers to access the drug, while Louisiana added pain associated with sickle cell as a qualifying condition earlier this year. No other southern states have medical marijuana programs.
Pamela Berry-Johnson of Biloxi has a 7-year-old daughter who has sickle cell disease and suffers from chronic pain. The medicine they use to treat her daughter’s pain crises, which occur when sickle-shaped red blood cells block oxygen flow, are often ineffective.
“It is so hard as a mother to see your child in such tremendous agony and pain,” Berry-Johnson said.
Berry-Johnson said she grew up hearing “Just Say No” about drugs in the aftermath of the crack epidemic. She considers herself “a square,” certainly not someone with an interest in marijuana in general. But her thinking on the issue has shifted gradually, and she’s supporting 65 because it offers hope for a possible treatment for her daughter in the future.
“Sickle cell is a disease that largely affects African Americans,” she said. “We want to be at the forefront of this if this passes and make sure the benefits reach us quickly.”
Are medical pot groups avoiding race?
The people featured in photos and videos on the website and Facebook page set up by Mississippians for Compassionate Care, called Medical Marijuana 2020, are almost entirely white.
But on another pro-Initiative 65 website and Facebook page, Yes for Medical Marijuana, almost all of the people in the photos and videos on the site are Black.
Yes for Medical Marijuana was paid for by an organization called Mississippians for Compassionate Healthcare. Filings with the Secretary of State’s office showed that group was formed by Mississippi Rep. Chris Bell (D-Jackson) just a few months ago. Bell said the group has raised money from around the state; its most recent filing in September showed it had taken in $1,700 so far, compared to more than $2.5 million for Mississippians for Compassionate Care so far this year.
Bell said he launched his political initiative committee to add another voice pushing for the passage of Initiative 65.
“That is just an opportunity to showcase that everybody is for it, regardless of your skin color,” he said.
Race has not explicitly featured in public arguments either for or against Initiative 65. But Bell said that, as always in Mississippi, it was an important part of the context.
“Anything in the state of Mississippi that is promoted by Black folks, people of color, it’s gonna have a negative connotation to it by some individuals,” he said. “So you have to make sure that you have an equal number of support on both sides. We play that game at the Capitol.”
Business opportunities for all?
In other states around the country, laws setting up medical and recreational marijuana industries have been written to ensure economic benefits flow to the people who have borne the brunt of America’s war on drugs. In California, for example, some cities reserve licenses for poor people with marijuana convictions. Regulators in Massachusetts give priority to reviewing license applications from Black and Hispanic-owned businesses.
Advocates like Jones Bonner want to make sure people of color in Mississippi benefit financially from any medical marijuana program too, even if that’s not a current priority of the primary backers of Initiative 65.
She said it has been galling to watch mostly white business people benefit from the national explosion of an industry around a drug for which hundreds of thousands of Black Americans still have a criminal record.
“You’re stigmatized, your life is ruined for even some minor possession of marijuana, you can never own a gun, and now you’re precluded from participating from an industry that’s booming and making people multimillionaires, and then some people are still in prison for less than joint,” she said.
She and some colleagues are planning a conference on cannabis to take place on the Gulf Coast next year. They want to educate farmers and potential business owners of color about the rules and possibilities of hemp and marijuana cultivation.
Regardless of whether Initiative 65 or 65A, or neither, passes on Election Day, Jones Bonner believes it will take work to ensure people of color can not only use marijuana to treat their medical conditions, but also have access to business opportunities created by the new industry.
“I don’t think that it’s going to be an easy road for people of color to participate in this space,” she said.
This story was originally published November 2, 2020 at 3:57 PM.
