In a new cannabis landscape, a Navy veteran fights for racial equality

'Transforming Spaces' is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.

Clamp the towel under the door. Open the window. And hide the hookah.

For decades, students have found ways to mask the acrid smell of marijuana smoke on campuses. However, Wanda James didn't always feel the need to hide. Ms. James, a 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, sat on the steps outside her dorm and rolled joints with her friends.

It would be decades before Colorado became one of the first two states in the country to legalize recreational cannabis, but James was never worried on campus.

“The worst that would happen was they would tell us to put it away or they would take it away from us, and that would be the end of it,” Ms. recalled. James addresses the campus police.

Fast forward 40 years: Ms. James, a former Navy lieutenant, is a member of her alma mater's Board of Regents – and a prominent advocate for racial justice in the changing cannabis landscape.

It wasn't until after college that Ms. James realized she had been living in a kind of alternate reality with her cannabis use. She discovered how the United States' marijuana laws have led to black Americans being sentenced to prison at a higher rate than white Americans despite almost identical usage figuresgiving her the mission she has dedicated her life to.

Ms. James, 60, has owned several cannabis businesses over the years, including a pair of dispensaries and an edibles company, which has given her a platform to speak about what she believes are racial injustices in the industry. She is leading in her call for the legalization of cannabis at the state and federal level. Federal scientists have recommended in recent reports loosening restrictions on marijuana, a so-called Schedule I drug like heroin, and reclassifying it as a Schedule III drug, along with ketamine and testosterone.

“Wanda is a force of nature!” said Senator John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado who appointed Ms. James to a task force that came up with recommendations on how marijuana should be regulated in Colorado. These recommendations became a model for the twenty states that have since legalized the sale of cannabis in recreational dispensaries.

But as more states have legalized the sale of recreational cannabis, prompting larger companies to enter an industry that is becoming increasingly mainstream, Ms. James is one of the few Black women in a leadership role. Several smaller cannabis companies, mostly run by people of color and women — many of whom were health care providers who saw the benefits of medical marijuana for those they cared for — have been driven out of the space, Ms. James said.

De facto women-owned cannabis companies decreased from 22.2 percent in 2022 to 16.4 percent in 2023 with racial minorities making up just 18.7 percent of owners, according to a report from MJBiz Daily, a publication that covers cannabis-related legal and financial news.

Today, Ms. James is pushing not only for broader legalization of cannabis — recreational use of the plant is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia, but illegal at the federal level — but also for industry reforms to ensure more people looking for cannabis. like them fulfill leadership roles.

She believes that by becoming a pharmacy owner, and now a leader in an industry with policies that have historically harmed Black and Latino Americans, she could regain some power for minorities targeted in hotbed communities of marijuana arrests. In New York, for example, state cannabis regulators documented as many as 1.2 million marijuana arrests, which disproportionately targeted Black and Latino Americans over the past 42 years.

“There's so much going on in the industry where it's not a promising place right now that sees diversity as a positive thing,” she said. “We're trying to find ways to help.”

Ms. James grew up in rural Colorado on a ranch full of dogs, rabbits, chickens and guinea pigs. Her father, a single parent and Air Force veteran, was a cowboy and they often rode horses together.

The preference for caring for animals has continued. Ms. James has fostered more than 30 dogs over the years, including some she found on the street. Like her father, she joined the military and became the first black woman to complete the University of Colorado's ROTC program. She served in the Navy for four years before moving to Los Angeles, where she worked for two Fortune 100 companies. She also met her husband, Scott Durrah, then a real estate manager in West Hollywood and a fellow pot smoker, with whom she opened several restaurants in Colorado and California. Mrs. James' Rottweiler, Onyx, was the bridesmaid at their wedding.

As the couple built their business, the country felt the long-term effects of President Ronald Reagan's harsh cannabis policies. Mr. Reagan's Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 — the year Ms. James graduated from college — “flooded the federal system with people convicted of low-level, nonviolent drug crimes,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice. In 2007, nearly 800,000 people were arrested for simple marijuana possession. the FBI. reported. About 80 percent of those arrested were black. .

“It was the demographic group that was least likely to have a family friend who was a lawyer and least likely to have parents or family money to be able to get them out of the situation that night,” Ms. James said.

These statistics remained a priority for Ms. James as she pursued cannabis business ownership and worked behind the scenes in politics.

In 2008, Ms. James managed the successful congressional campaign of Jared Polis, a Democrat who was elected governor of Colorado in 2018. The following year, she and Mr. Durrah opened the Apothecary of Colorado, a medical cannabis dispensary, and became the first African Americans own a legal pharmacy in the United States. They later closed the medical pharmacy to open an edibles company, Simply Pure, which became Simply Pure Denver, a recreational pharmacy, in 2015.

“She is a trailblazer,” said Tahir Johnson, a student of Ms. James. “When you think of a strong black woman, that's what she embodies.”

When she became a businesswoman and shaper of marijuana policy, she had a personal reference point that she often returned to in her work: her half-brother, who served time in prison for, among other things, possession of marijuana.

Ms. James has shared her journey in short documentaries produced by The Atlantic Ocean And Yahooand in 2018, she was named one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry by High Times Magazine. She has used her platform to call for federal legalization of cannabis, which would help dispensary owners inject some of the money they paid in taxes back into their businesses, increasing the likelihood of creating “generational wealth” , she said; Because recreational cannabis is still illegal at the federal level, dispensary owners cannot write off basic expenses such as employee salaries, unlike non-cannabis businesses.

And she uses her network to create change. Starting with Mr. Johnson, her mentor, Ms. James is licensing the Simply Pure name to young entrepreneurs in the industry who come from communities harmed by racial disparities in marijuana arrests.

Mr Johnson said he had been arrested three times for marijuana possession and was “honoured”. Mrs. James chose him to continue her legacy. He plans to open Simply Pure Trenton soon.

“The fact that she trusted me to take on this mantle for this next phase of the organization means a lot to me,” he said.