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Equity-focused policies implemented to date have made little progress toward their goals, authors say
RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — A new paper from researchers at RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, calls for state governments to require equity to be a focus of cannabis legalization efforts in accordance with the recommendations outlined by social equity and legal experts.
The paper, authored by Barrett Montgomery, Ph.D., a research public health analyst, and Jane Allen, a senior research communication scientist, was published in Clinical Therapeutics on Wednesday.
“This paper sets out to describe how and why social equity and community reinvestment programs enacted as part of cannabis legalization have made little progress toward their goals,” said Montgomery, the lead author. “We contend that the lack of success achieving equity, despite it being a stated goal in many states, is tied to the history of drug policy in the U.S., which means governments may need to reconsider how they approach the issue.”
In addition to social equity and community reinvestment programs having limited success in many states, Montgomery and Allen point out that despite the growing wave of grassroots reforms and the framing of legalization as a rejection of the War on Drugs, racial inequities in cannabis arrests have continued or even worsened in states that have legalized cannabis for adult use.
They also provide a summary of how drug policies developed in the U.S., offering insight on the Opium Wars, the War on Drugs and other important legislation and historical context. The paper includes a discussion of modern drug policy, struggles to implement effective equity and recommendations from the Cannabis Regulators of Color Coalition (CRCC) and Parabola Center for Law and Policy that could represent a new approach to cannabis law and policy.
The paper concludes by commending states on responding to the will of their voters by “liberalizing cannabis and explicitly framing social equity as a goal” but also notes there is “compelling evidence” that suggests equity-related efforts have been “vastly insufficient.”
