Here’s the introduction to their piece which say social equity was “subverted” in the state
Predatory investors hijacked the cannabis social equity program in Arizona, where only three of the original 26 license winners still have a stake in their businesses, according to allegations filed in court and repeated in the state Legislature.
Despite outrage over this controversy, a state lawmaker’s reform proposal aimed at returning the coveted permits to their original winners failed to pass the Senate last month, in part because of interference from Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration, observers told MJBizDaily.
The situation is notable for its strange political alignments:
- An ultraconservative lawmaker who says social equity is “a scam” agitating on behalf of social equity licensees.
- A Democratic governor whose chief of staff worked on the state’s adult-use legalization initiative defending what critics say were coercive techniques reminiscent of the subprime mortgage crisis.
But the failure of Arizona’s Senate Bill 1262 is also a major setback for the legal marijuana industry’s broader social justice efforts.
Social equity subverted
For regulators and cannabis advocates, the fiasco in Arizona is the latest demonstration of how the social equity process can be subverted and how difficult it can be to prevent such gamesmanship.
“Large retail chains and marijuana farms are exploiting the very community that the social equity license process was designed to protect,” Arizona Rep. Alma Hernandez wrote in a July 2023 letter to the Department of Health Services, which regulates marijuana in the state.
“Although this program was well-intentioned, in practice it has failed to achieve its originally stated goals.”
For other observers, it’s an object lesson that equal participation in legal marijuana markets remains elusive, if not impossible.
“The reality is, what happened is what the law and the rules and regulations allowed to happen,” Demetri Downing, the founder and president of the Arizona Marijuana Industry Trade Association (MITA), told MJBizDaily.
More broadly, he added, “social equity is like trying to social engineer reality.
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