23 Sep Stoner Movies Strain Equitable Legalization

BY PAURY FLOWERS

If you were dropped on Earth and had to form an opinion after watching the top 10 Stoner movies from Rolling Stone (movies like Cheech and Chong, Pineapple Express and Big Lebowski), you would likely notice patterns of maleness, Whiteness, sloth, and comedic timing.  These films are never ending adventures filled with warped visuals, chopped and screwed vocals, and a lot of food product placement. There is a pale stoner in a smoky room couch-locked playing weird music. In some variations, another pale stoner is manically creating something. In these films, the archetype of the stoner is, at best, someone who has potential but is undesirable and unfocused. 

These stoner movies reinforce white supremacy racism and discrimination with propaganda. The 1936 film Reefer Madness told a fictional story of White high school youth being lured into trying cannabis, and their lives descend into chaos, including hallucinations, rape, and vehicular manslaughter. Its chief goal was to portray Mexican immigrants as criminal drug dealers that were willing to offer dangerous drugs to innocent kids. Not since the race film Birth of a Nation has there been such a racist and fear mongering film. While stoner movies today don’t take the same hard stance, portraying White stoners as harmless, lazy, funny people while Black people or other people of color are constantly portrayed as criminals that threaten the goodness of society further promotes racial inequities even as cannabis is becoming legalized.

While cannabis consumption is the same across races, in Black communities it is viewed as a problem solved by mass incarceration, while wealthy ‘trustafarians’ in White suburban communities have room to legally profit with no associated penalties.  

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) relayed in the 2020 ACLU report A Tale of Two Countries: Racially Targeted Arrests in the Era of Marijuana Reform Black people are 3.64 times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession. This is with the backdrop of cannabis being newly deemed essential. Black and Brown people make up less than 5% of cannabis business owners but are the largest percentage of individuals incarcerated for marijuana-related offenses.

The hypocrisy is evident. As a Black woman born in the ‘War on Drugs’ era who is now a medical marijuana patient, the stigma still present in stoner culture has been disorienting. Medical Marijuana dispensaries now emulate Brookstone’s look and feel, yet Black and Brown people I know are still impacted by the reverberations from failed drug policies. These lasting impacts include urban trauma, prison time, and denied access to education, public housing, and business loans.

With recently essential medical and recreational cannabis industry leaders quickly approaching billions in valuation, shouldn’t cannabis use now be considered acceptable and everyone with cannabis offenses be freed from jail? 

Even recent promising reports regarding politicians like Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf calling for recreational marijuana legalization “with revenue going to small business grant funding and restorative justice programs” have to be investigated further, since social equity does not usually work in practice as well as it does in theory. The most unfortunate truth I’ve discovered is that just a simple “legalize it” like Bob Marley implored in his music isn’t going to free us all or equitably distribute the wealth to those who have experienced the heaviest cost of cannabis prohibition. 

I talked to Rafi Crockett, documentary filmmaker and community leader with over a decade of risk and regulatory compliance work under her belt. We discussed her upcoming documentary Higher Power and her work sponsoring DC’s National Expungement Week last year. She holds a firm wait-and-see attitude toward most talk of federal legalization because it doesn’t help the vast majority of marijuana-related offenders who serve state sentences.  Because Washington D.C.is not a state, most of its offenders are serving time in federal prisons rather than local jails (unless their charges are less serious or they have shorter sentences).

This reality of prison time and the many negative factors faced by Black cannabis consumers have mostly missed me, but not my relatives and friends. It’s important to note my privileges of attending private high school and a predominately white liberal arts college. In my formative years post-college living in Philadelphia, I’ve passed blunts, joints, and vape pens to doctors, lawyers, engineers, and artists. Only the OGs know that the future of stoner culture is a lot more like Tony Stark and Iron Man than Shaggy and Scooby Doo Adventures; yet, even these more current representations of cannabis users only focus on white male characters.

The lack of representation on screen reinforces the inequities we’re seeing with legalization. Democratic VP Senator Kamala Harris has received unique support from organizations like  NORML for co-sponsoring the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. It’s 35 pages and has some interesting concepts, like Opportunity Trust Funds and small business loans for cannabis-related businesses, but who will really see the benefits of such legislation without addressing the inequity elephant in the room?

It’s already clear that corporate cannabis does not allow equal opportunities. Less than 5% of cannabis businesses are Black-owned; concepts like vertical integration (or seed-to-sale) requirements and the long and complex equity application process present huge barriers when it comes to starting a cannabis business. Plus, white businesses offer money necessary for most Black cannabis-related businesses to grow but with contractual obligations that wind up giving them controlling interest in the company. On top of that, individuals with criminal pasts connected to drug charges (including marijuana) can’t even participate in the new industry. Clearly, simply legalizing marijuana doesn’t even begin to erase inequities. 

That’s where we need smart local advocacy work done. Crockett highlights both New York and Philadelphia for hosting local lobby days to further impact state response to the growing cannabis industries.

We need to reimagine what cannabis use and stoner culture could look like. The old stoner tropes from the movies don’t represent who I am or who I see lining up at dispensaries. The future–like the awesome cannabis plant itself–is very much female, so it’s time for a revisioning. 

I believe that like the larger reckoning film and entertainment outlets need to do with racism and patriarchy, representations of stoner culture need to start making room for more diverse voices and stories. My 20 years of stoner culture experience is just now being reflected in shows like Issa Rae’s HBO series Insecure. Crockett agrees, “Insecure was really refreshing!” 

Our culture wants to see more artsy, beautiful, fashionable Black stoners who eat healthy, produce miracles at their jobs, and make batches of edibles for friends. I want to see road trips with camping and international vacations where cannabis co-stars. 

Crockett expresses that unlike the experience of watching Insecure, her experience watching the series Weeds was underwhelming. “We started getting shows like Weeds and we moved away from stoners on the couch to this now palliative and acceptable white Suburban mom so we’ve moved into that narrative…but the images of Black people have not shifted.” In her documentary, Crockett says she specifically highlights the experience of homegrowing done by Black women because “we aren’t seeing the aunties and grandmothers growing and teaching people about the medicine behind the plant. That’s what cannabis has been for people for so long…it’s not just about destigmatizing”

These more inclusive stories have definitely missed their time to shine. Is it because not enough White stoners in film and entertainment actually care? 

More cannabis advocacy organizations like NORML need to find ways to support these diverse perspectives as another means of shifting the culture and building a critical mass to impact effective legislation.

If we do it right, the next decade might be the one when we end the stigma, deschedule cannabis, and break away from mass incarceration for good so we can all profit from the industry and sesh with a better conscience.

Paury Flowers is a Detroit-born Greater Philly mompreneur. I write grants. I speak publicly. I create digital content (VapeJawn). I own businesses (Kaya Concierge) I plan projects and events. Join me this week at Black Cannabis Week 2020 (Sept 20 – 27, 2020). Info and Tickets