Paper: Racial, ethnic, and neighborhood socioeconomic disparities in local cannabis retail policy in California

California’s 2016 ballot Proposition 64 (California Proposition 64, Marijuana Legalization (2016), n.d.) legalized growing or possessing cannabis for recreational use by persons aged 21 and older. It established a framework for legal cannabis commerce, which commenced in January 2018. The state created a regulatory system for licensing and criteria for operations, but cities and counties retained local control (California Proposition 64, Marijuana Legalization (2016), n.d.). While some municipalities prohibit all commercial cannabis activities, many jurisdictions developed their own cannabis regulations, creating a patchwork of local policies with unclear distributional equity (Padon et al., 2022). Many provisions considered to be best practices in tobacco control remain largely absent from the regulatory landscape (Padon et al., 2022). Mitigating harms inflicted by the discriminatory practices of the War on Drugs, which disproportionately affect Black (Alexander, 2012; American Civil Liberties Union, 2020) and Latinx communities (Motivans, 2020; Taxy et al., 2015), has been a widely cited rationale for cannabis legalization (Earp et al., 2021; Miron & Partin, 2021). While major progress has been made on reducing cannabis-related arrests and expunging criminal convictions, as of 2020, only 5 % of California’s 539 cities and counties had adopted licensing policies to advance social justice for affected communities by supporting their entry into the legal cannabis industry (Padon et al., 2022). Simultaneously, concern exists that concentrating cannabis retailers in economically disadvantaged or racially or ethnically marginalized communities could have harmful consequences, as has occurred with alcohol and tobacco retailers (Kong et al., 2019; Ribisl et al., 2017; Romley et al., 2007).

Differential distribution of local cannabis policies across demographic groups could mitigate, create or exacerbate social injustice and health disparities. Cannabis use, especially when frequent, has been associated with negative health outcomes (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering & Medicine, 2017), and among Californians, any and frequent use rates have typically been highest among non-Latinx Black and white populations (Padwa et al., 2022). Low-income communities, already more vulnerable to health disparities (Phelan et al., 2010), may be at greater risk if their local laws have fewer public health protections. It remains unclear which cannabis policies will be associated with positive versus negative long-term health and social outcomes.

Diverse social identities are experienced simultaneously, necessitating an intersectional examination of differential policy exposure (Crenshaw, 1989; Krieger et al., 1993). This study jointly examines the proportion of California residents from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic subgroups living under laws allowing cannabis retail commerce, protecting public health, and facilitating licensing equity to identify possible disparities in this natural experiment of local cannabis law exposure.