The Minority Cannabis Business Association has issued a statement over the protests going on nationwide over police brutality and racial injustice.

The association said that it stands in solidarity with the movement to end the racist murders of black and brown people at the hands of the police.

Some of the statement reads:

Many of our members have experienced direct negative and dangerous interactions with police, the criminal justice system, and the power structures that perpetuate inequities in our communities through racially motivated policies like the war on drugs.

The officers who murdered George Floyd joked “Don’t do drugs” before taking his life over an alleged forgery charge. When the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office filed the complaint against one of the officers who murdered George Floyd they issued a since retracted statement saying “other evidence doesn’t support a criminal charge,” including preliminary autopsy findings, without toxicology results, that claimed Floyd’s “underlying health conditions, and any potential intoxicants in his system likely contributed to his death.” This is a clear example of Drug War policy being used to cover up the murder of a black man.

The war on drugs, predominantly waged against black and brown men, destroys the social fabric of our communities and prevents a life of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As a key weapon of the war on drugs, marijuana prohibition has led to black Americans being almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as our white counterparts and remains one of the top reasons for police interactions with our community, which can too often become a death sentence.

This consistent disregard for the lives and wellbeing of our communities has resulted in an untenable situation. We must implement a bold and comprehensive program focused on uplifting our communities. Without this, we will continue to bring this system to a halt.

The best path forward is to hold accountable all officers who committed violent crimes, demilitarize all police departments and shift those public dollars to social services, end the war on drugs and its criminalization of black and brown bodies, and lastly put social equity at the forefront of all marijuana legalization policies so that our communities can rebuild from the devastation of decades of police terror.


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