Nancy vs. Oakland (Part 3)
Lessons from the past for today's advocates
The following is an excerpt from p. 84-89 of Chapter 3, “Nancy vs. Oakland: What Advocates Can Learn from the Origins of ‘Just Say No’” from my first book, we’re here, we’re high (2018):
[This is the 3rd in a 3-part series. See also Part 1 and Part 2.]
II. Oakland’s Cannabis Equity Program
Thirty-plus years later, much has changed. Many have realized that a “Just Say No” approach does not work. Oakland’s policies today indicate that it has gone in an almost opposite direction. Cannabis is legal in California, both medically (since 1996) and recreationally (since 2016). In response, the city of Oakland has created a cannabis equity program. The program dictates that “a minimum of half of all [cannabis] permits must be issued to Equity applicants.”1 Equity applicants are those who either a) have accrued cannabis convictions in Oakland since the passage of Proposition 215 (November 5, 1996), or b) have lived for at least ten years in a neighborhood with statistically higher incidences of arrest. A list of neighborhoods, or “police beats,” which qualify is enumerated on the program’s website.2
The equity program also creates opportunities for incubators, who provide equity applicants with rent and security for three years. The incubators are people like Felix Murry and Kingston (last name withheld from the public), who operate GasHouse, a cannabis brand available in California.3 Felix and Kingston partnered with Scott Bonagofsky, founder and CEO of Cannaplex, to offer their skills, resources, and time to incubate Oakland’s upcoming cannabis entrepreneurs. Bonagofsky explained the origins of Cannaplex in an interview with Vice. “I found the last big warehouse in Oakland,” he recalls, “and instead of flipping it, we decided to try to create something that was gonna be a learning center, and a resource center, for the east Oakland cannabis community and the west Oakland cannabis community.”4 Felix and Kingston, with their experiential knowledge of how to launch a successful cannabis brand, were natural partners for Scott. Scott provides the space where Felix and Kingston share their prowess with some of Oakland’s aspiring cannabis professionals.
To understand how they got to a position where they could offer this, let us briefly look to Kington’s history as an underground grower in suburban Atlanta. Approximately twenty years ago Kingston decided he wanted to grow cannabis. He put in years of work to learn how to grow high quality cannabis using natural ingredients like cayenne pepper rather than synthetic pesticides.5 He set up operations in garages and basements around Atlanta, where he grew up to 75 plants at a time. He even developed his own strain of cannabis and dubbed it Gas House OG. He supported himself by selling his cannabis to “pro-athletes and hip-hop stars.”6 The risk of persecution, however, eventually inspired Kingston to leave Atlanta for an area with legal cannabis.
A that point he teamed up with Felix Murry, also of Atlanta, who had a career managing night clubs. With Felix’s business sense and Kingston’s green thumb, the two moved to California and founded GasHouse. GasHouse has since become a successful multi-million dollar operation. They grow many different flower strains and produce extracts, which are sold at various dispensaries. GasHouse’s success has allowed Kingston and Felix to guide others in their entry into the cannabis industry. This is the real substance of their work with Scott at Cannaplex.
One of their disciples at the Cannaplex, Milon Lee, offers some insight as to why this is so special. In the incubator, Lee feels he has “an opportunity to be able to talk to the people that have been paving the way for us, for people that look like us.”7 “Since they paved that way,” he explains, “this [incubator] is like that stepping stone which helps us get to the next step: trying to be legal. Trying to get off the streets, essentially.” Kingston and Felix offer some further commentary on why this whole process is meaningful. “Cannabis,” Kingston explains, “is the first shot at legacy for my family.” With the earnings amassed from a career in legal cannabis, “I can build generational wealth where my kids can have opportunities to be great.”8 In this way, the cannabis industry is unique from many others. Kingston and Felix, along with most of their disciples at Cannaplex, are Black. The chance for them to turn otherwise illicit knowledge into a legitimate fortune for their future families would be unlikely or null in any other industry.
And they are not afraid to speak on the power dynamics which both produced the situation and continue to permeate it. Referencing prohibitionist policy, Felix explains that such arcane “drug laws were put in place, you know—because it was something that they could put Blacks and hippies in jail with—people they didn’t want part of society anyway.”9 The oppression continues, however, and even today, many BIPOC communities are hesitant to fully embrace legal cannabis. Felix explains this by rhetorically asking, “Wouldn’t you be scared of something that persecutes you? [Something that] your relatives and friends have been going to jail for, and police have been using to search your car and pat you down, all your life?” A tense history of repression still hangs over modern cannabis efforts. This is ultimately the reason that Oakland’s equity program is needed in the first place.
Cannaplex, and other Oakland incubator projects such as The Hood Incubator, combat these dynamics and change the narrative around legal cannabis. “When you think of weed,” Kingston explains, “you think of minorities only being sellers, street peddlers. You don’t look at them as being in the industry with the brand. You don’t look at them as being growers, you don’t look at them as that. So when you see us, we’re like the elephant in the room.”10 This is slowly but surely changing. Massachusetts, when creating its cannabis program, adopted policy very similar to Oakland’s. Ultimately we will see if Felix, Kingston, and others can avoid the missteps of Joan Brann and Tom Adams.
Although the landscape which Kingston and Felix occupy is seemingly world’s away from that which Brann did, they are in fact in the same city. The risks in their mission are also similar to Brann’s. In a way, Brann’s goal was the same as many modern cannabis advocates: a healthy community. Brann started a (temporarily) effective grassroots program that empowered Oakland. Her solution, however, was rapidly co-opted by federal and corporate interests. In the current cannabis industry we see indications that a very similar shift could already be taking place.
While the equity program has empowered a few, it has not yet developed to a point that it can empower the whole community. Many in Oakland cannot get in to the program, and many more have not even heard of it. After interviewing Kingston and Felix, a Vice reporter walked around an Oakland neighborhood to get a feel for the community’s attitude toward cannabis. The reporter asked a small group of Black Oakland residents, “Are people in the neighborhood, like, thinking about trying to get into [the legal] side of the business?”11 They replied,
Nah, not really, not enough, barely any…they ain’t coming over here and saying, “we got jobs for y’all to go transport this here” that’s legal...[They] ain’t coming down here and telling us, like, about...what’s that you told us about earlier? The equity program? I ain’t never heard of it. Ain’t never heard of it. Ain’t seen it either.
They were not even aware of their city’s cannabis equity program, which was implemented to empower people just like them. The situation speaks to the limitations of bureaucratic approaches. The program is still, relatively speaking, in its infancy. Perhaps, with the appropriate support, it can grow to the point of supporting the entire surrounding community.
In the meantime, let us study and learn from Oakland’s past. As mentioned above, the entire cannabis industry is seeing signs of a shift toward massive corporatization. Whether or not this trend will succeed, and how it will affect those most in need, is up to all of us. We can learn from Joan Brann’s story; her successes and mistakes. They show us the difficult path we tread as we attempt to craft a sustainable relationship between ourselves, the drugs we use, and the institutions which govern our lives. More recently in drug policy reform spaces, the “Just Say No” phrase has been revised and replaced with a motto which is much more apt. One with which we will leave the story for now: “Just Say Know.”
