Tag Archives: Black Excellence in Cannabis

Features

Shawn Kemp’s 5% Stake in Shawn Kemp Cannabis Highlights How Far Seattle Is from an “Equitable Industry”

by Luna Reyna

Last month cannabis media was enthusiastically reporting about the first Black-owned cannabis dispensary in Seattle, owned by one of Seattle’s heroes: Shawn Kemp, also known as the Reign Man, a six-time NBA All-Star and former Seattle SuperSonics Power Forward. The rub is that at the time of this announcement Kemp had no stake in the company that bears his name. Matt Schoenlein and Ramsey Hamide — two co-founders of Main Street Marijuana — owned the dispensary. A dispensary named Shawn Kemp Cannabis.

Unfortunately for Schoenlein and Hamide, activists and hopeful Black cannabis entrepreneurs who have been shut out of the business quickly called their bluff, revealing that Kemp’s application to join the existing license had not yet been approved and he would ultimately only have a 5% stake in the company. This hardly qualifies as “Black-owned.” “It was a blatant attempt to manipulate the public,” says Aaron Barfield, president of Black Excellence in Cannabis (BEC). A BEC press release called the claim that the dispensary was Black-owned “ethically reprehensible,” considering there are 50 cannabis dispensaries in Seattle and not one of them is Black-owned. But that is not for lack of trying.

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Voices

Social Equity in Cannabis Task Force Aims to Overcome Liquor and Cannabis Board’s History of Injustices to Washington’s Black Community

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by Luna Reyna

On Monday, Oct. 26, the Social Equity in Cannabis Task Force held its first public virtual meeting. It started off like any other virtual meeting — the kind many of us are all too familiar with: the odd feedback and crackling of mics while task force members situated themselves and made sure they could be seen and heard. 

The task force is “responsible for making recommendations to the Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) to establish a social equity program for the issuance and reissuance of existing retail cannabis licenses.” This is an affront to many Washington residents who feel the LCB has targeted Black cannabis entrepreneurs and has contributed to the gaping racial disparities in the local industry. There are also fewer than 40 licenses that fall under that limited umbrella in the entire state of Washington. 

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