Rantz: Seattle’s equity movement punishes white men to push race-based marijuana licenses

Article here. Excerpt:

'The Seattle City Council and Mayor are upset that too many “cannabis businesses are owned primarily by White men.” They have a plan to tackle the issue in the name of “cannabis equity.”

The council says white men operate 87% of the city’s pot shops. This stat is supposedly proof of institutional racism. Consequently, the city launched a Racial Equity Toolkit (RET) to “address disproportionate ownership of Seattle cannabis businesses and redress some of the harms caused by the racially unequal enforcement of prior cannabis laws.”
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The bill says the Mayor’s Office will “use summer legal interns to participate in and partner with ongoing regional efforts to work on expungement of cannabis convictions handed down prior to 2014.”

It will collect “demographic information about workers currently employed in Seattle’s cannabis industry” to develop new ideas to diversify the workforce and help determine how much the city should fund race-based training to help non-white Seattleites become pot shop owners.

Council Bill 120392 impacts marijuana license fees.

Business owners that are “social equity applicants” — a condescending term defined to almost exclusively apply to black people — would not have to pay for their marijuana license. This change gives “the greatest chances of success in entering the legal cannabis industry in Seattle,” according to the bill. Primarily white people will pay the $3,500 fee.'