The movement for racial equity in the medical cannabis trade appears to be going bipartisan—last week, Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, ordered the state to conduct a study on whether racial disparities exist in the process for obtaining a state license for growing or selling medical marijuana.
This doesn’t seem like a thing that needs much studying: Of the initial 15 preliminary licenses awarded by the Medical Cannabis Commission last year to grow the plant, none of them went to a company owned or controlled by an African American. That’s a pretty clear disparity. And it didn’t need to be that way.
