Run The Jewels performs at Day 3 of the Panorama Music Festival on Sunday, July 24, 2016 | Photos by Vickey Ford/Sneakshot for Okayplayer.
Photo Credit: Vickey Ford for Okayplayer
Killer Mike has penned an op-ed for Rolling Stone that addresses how and why black people are being left out of the legal marijuana market boom.
In the essay the rapper and activist discusses the history of marijuana prohibition in America, and how those often affected by the prohibition are black and Latino people. "As marijuana reform begins to de-escalate the drug war, creating new opportunities for employment and entrepreneurship in the process, it is imperative that the people most in need of a second chance actually get one," Mike wrote. "The price they have already paid for our failed drug policy is steep enough."
To this point the Run The Jewels rapper calls on state lawmakers to reform laws that prohibit "convicted felons, including those convicted of nonviolent drug crimes, from operating, or even working in" dispensaries in the United States.
"The current movement to legalize marijuana offers a small but important opportunity to dismantle these inequalities," Mike said. "And yet the people most likely to be victims of marijuana prohibition are the least likely to profit in its aftermath."
Similar to Mike's essay is a video that Jay Z did earlier this year on the war on drugs in America, titled "A History Of The War On Drugs: From Prohibition To Gold Rush." In a collaborative project with The New York Times, the rapper proceeded to discuss the ways in which the war on drugs that began with the Nixon administration, had affected minorities in the United States.
One of those effects? Those who have been charged a felon. People that move to places such as Colorado or Washington State cannot cash in on the booming marijuana business present there, because such charges stop them from being able to open up a dispensary of their own.
Check out Killer Mike's essay here.
