KALAMAZOO, MI (WKZO AM/FM) – Social equity was one of the items promised when Michigan voters were asked to make recreational marijuana legal, but little has been done to realize that promise.
Kalamazoo has one of the best programs, but officials says even it has a lot of room for improvement.
City Planning Director Antonio Mitchell says they want to create a Social Equity Chamber that will focus on getting residents from neighborhoods negatively impacted by old drug laws into jobs in the industry, or into businesses that support the dispensaries and growers.
He says the City of Kalamazoo is outperforming the rest of the state when it comes to cannabis equity. Statewide 11 of the 18 firms that have met the state’s gold standard for diversity are located in Kalamazoo.
Mitchell is proposing the city use a quarter of the funding it receives from the state for licensing cannabis businesses, over $200,000 annually, to fund the new Social Equity Chamber.
He says long term they might even help foster some owners from those neighborhoods.
Mitchell says he hopes to be back with a recommendation for action to start a pilot sometime this summer.
Despite incentives and lower thresholds for qualification, only a small percentage of the licenses issued by the state have gone to black or brown applicants. That’s true statewide and in Kalamazoo. Crain’s Business calls Michigan’s Cannabis Social Equity program among the worst in the nation.
reporting from John McNeill
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