[Music]
I’m gonna start by telling you a story
of two young men let me first introduce
you to Darryl Darryl grew up in a rather
poor area of a midsize city his parents
and older siblings all worked long hours
to ensure he had a comfortable life and
amongst his peers Darryl was often
teased for choosing to study instead of
hanging out and playing video games or
basketball now like most kids his age
Darrel wasn’t immune to peer pressure
and then on their way home from school
many afternoons his friends would stop
in a nearby park to smoke weed now
Darryl usually said no to their
insistence that he join in but on one
afternoon he reluctantly agreed it was a
beautiful day and their last day of high
school classes ever now unfortunately
for Darryl and unbeknownst to him and
his friends he picked a bad time to do
so
the local police had just stepped up
patrols in the area because residents
were complaining about kids in the park
wrapped up in the excitement of Darryl
getting high for the first time none of
the guys noticed two officers
approaching on their bicycles what’s
that smell one of the officers asked the
authoritative tone of the police
sounding all too familiar to these young
men they stopped they looked at the
officers and looked at Darryl and then
back at the officers Darryl stood there
shocked with a spliff in his hands what
it started out as some fun would have a
huge impact on Darryl’s life because of
the problems in the neighborhood
the police were unwilling to give him a
break and so he was charged with drug
possession and having just turned 18 he
was an adult so he was prosecuted in
adult court he might just have been
given a warning but crime was supposedly
on the rise and no one wanted to take it
easy on the kids from the bad
neighborhoods so on the advice of his
court-appointed lawyer who told me
didn’t have much of a case he pled
guilty
now Darryl’s criminal record would
follow him from there on all those hours
spent studying felt futile because as a
result of his record he couldn’t get
financial aid
which shut the door on college none of
the jobs he’d hoped to get as a young
man were available to someone with a
criminal record and so he found himself
sliding in and out of a series of
unfulfilled jobs his life wasn’t
terrible but it wasn’t what he or his
family had expected for him he’d been a
smart kid but he never got to benefit
from the education that comes along with
traveling he never got to move out of
the neighborhood he’d grown up in like
many of his friends and his siblings nor
did he have money to save for his own
now Darryl’s story and brush with the
law makes me think about Ryan also 18
Ryan grew up in a typical middle-class
family he got a car on his 16th birthday
and spent summers and weekends at a
cottage that his parents often reminded
him had been in the family for four
generations now Ryan’s parents worked
long hours leaving him with free rein
over the house and because they were
rarely home in time for dinner they
usually left him money to buy take out
being an enterprising young man Ryan
figured that he could save half the
money his parents had left him for
dinner buy weed with it and then sell
that weed to his friends to make a
healthy profit each week he’d go to a
local college campus he’d buy a couple
of ounces sell it to his friends and
repeat the process the next week now
perhaps it was because of where he lived
what he looked like or given the fact
that none of his friends had been in
trouble with the law before for whatever
reason he never worried about getting
caught but on the way home from a pickup
one night he rolled through a stop sign
and got pulled over by the cops when
asked to hand over his insurance papers
Ryan had to reach into the glove box
where he just stashed his product like
Darryl
Ryan was busted but things didn’t take
such a nasty turn for Ryan the police
called his mom who met him at the
station
and after some strong words and the
suggestion she might call the family
lawyer the police agreed to let Ryan go
he was a good kid from a nice family and
he was heading off to a prestigious
Ryann promised his mom that he wouldn’t
be selling any more weed and he kept his
promise and he also put the money he’d
made into a savings account telling
himself he’d pay his parents back some
of the money they were spending on his
education when he was finished he
graduated from university with big
dreams and a bigger Network and he
thought little about his arrest until it
became apparent that cannabis was going
to be legalized well some people talked
about the social benefits of
legalization Ryan’s colleagues at work
talked about the huge profits that could
be made from legal sales with the help
of a mentor he and a former classmate
developed a business case and started
pitching to venture capitalists their
idea to grow and market high quality
cannabis to baby boomers perhaps
unsurprisingly
their idea caught the attention of some
local investors who helped build the
business the only caveat was that Ryan
would have to come up with 5% of the
startup funds with a good feeling about
his idea and some reassurance he’d sold
pot before Ryan withdrew the money he
said he was gonna pay his parents back
with and used it to found his new
company after a few years of hard work
and with a lot of help Ryan his
colleague as friend were growing and
selling cannabis and the product was
literally flying off the shelves by his
early 30s Ryan had turned the fifteen
thousand dollars he’d made selling
illegal weed into a multi-million dollar
business new life cannabis was a huge
Darryl meanwhile continued to struggle
he had little luck finding steady work
and so one of his friends suggested he
try the local cannabis store now he
didn’t like the idea very much because
of all the trouble that we did got him
in the past but he was desperate to find
a decent paying job he tidied up his
resume put his pride aside and headed
down to the store somewhat nervous and
certainly apprehensive he walked in he
asked for the manager and handed over
his resume a quick glance at his resume
revealed his address still in the very
undesirable part of town the manager
asked in just one question
do you have a criminal record now hoping
the manager would find the irony in his
story
Darryl admitted that he’d been caught
smoking a joint with some friends when
he was young and that he’d been hit with
a possession charge without skipping a
beat the manager handed back his resume
and said I’m sorry but the law won’t
allow new life cannabis to hire someone
with a drug conviction and Darryl’s
story typifies one of the new forms of
injustice stemming from the war on drugs
that’s the inability of people who were
its main targets to benefit from the
fruits of legalization see cannabis
legalization is all around us the
emerging industry has already created
kanna billionaires and their companies
have gone global but all the talk of
economic prosperity has overshadowed
some of the momenta social opportunities
that legalization provides us with now
interestingly I see myself is much more
similar to Darrell than I do to Ryan see
I don’t think I was destined to become a
professor but my passion for uncovering
the type of injustice I’ve just spoken
about started at a young age see I
always enjoyed learning as a child but
the classroom was not the place for me
to do it I was often bored and
disruptive and so I spent more time in
the principal’s office in the hallways
and I care to admit but these
experiences taught me an important
lesson I got to see the profound
influence that individual teachers and
the schools in an institution can have
over the lives of young people well some
of us were suspended or expelled for
acting out similar behavior from other
students was largely ignored now I was
fortunate I graduated from high school
with decent grades might have taken me
six years but I did so and I went to
university to study criminology and when
I did something funny happened I
experienced a form of deja vu not
because I was getting into trouble again
but because I saw the injustice –is
that I’ve been exposed to in my school
years playing out on a mass scale as it
turns out there are a few areas in our
society where injustice is as apparent
as it is in our criminal justice systems
factors like race and socioeconomic
status play a huge role in determining
who gets stopped and searched by the
police who’s convicted in our courts and
who sent to our prisons and as US
criminologist know all too well
it’s the unequal enforcement of our drug
laws it’s a huge driver of these
inequalities as acclaimed poet Tupac
Shakur reminds us instead of a war on
poverty they’ve got a war on drugs
so the police can bother me and I
actually used that line from one of
Tupac songs in a paper I wrote in
university the course drugs the user in
the state and the professor dawn Moore I
remember her fondly it was the first
time I ever got an A in an academic
subject she taught me a lot about what
I’m sharing with you now that for most
of human history drugs were not illegal
that our first drug laws were designed
specifically to target black indigenous
Asian and Latino populations the black
people in America for example are six
times more likely to be arrested for
cannabis possession than white people
even though they use the drug at similar
rates and that these same disparities
exist here as well importantly I learned
how easily had I slipped up I could have
been in Daryl’s shoes rather than
standing here now sharing his story you
see it’s this realization and a
knowledge that I look like one of the
primary targets of the war on drugs this
led me to add my voice to the calls for
progressive measures to be included in
our move towards cannabis legalization I
think making money is great and Canada
has a great head start in terms of
building these businesses but there’s
lots we can do to repair some of what
happened under prohibition as a first
step we should ensure that our
governments erase the criminal records
for people who’ve been convicted of
crimes that are no longer illegal
[Applause]
pardonez aren’t enough pardons leave a
record intact and simply signal that an
individual has been forgiven for doing
wrong or breaking the law
what we need is expungement expungement
completely wipes any trace of that
record clean at least federally and
signals that the government was wrong to
criminalize a behavior in the first
place
cannabis amnesty is a first step forward
secondly we must make sure that the very
people who were targeted by the war on
drugs have an opportunity to benefit
from the fruits of legalization to once
have arrested and incarcerated a group
of people for doing something and then
denying them the ability to benefit from
its newfound legal status only adds
insult to injury think about all the
people in daryl rather than ryan shoes
there are literally hundreds of
thousands of Daryl’s out there people
who will not be able to find jobs in the
new cannabis economy because of previous
cannabis convictions and these insults
are only made worse by the fact that we
now have former police officials and
police leaders running licensed cannabis
companies the very people responsible
for waging the war on drugs get to cash
in well the people they targeted are
left out and finally we should be
pressuring our governments to reinvest
some of the tax revenues generated from
the sale of legal cannabis back into the
communities most harmed by prohibition
enforcing our old laws costs us billions
of dollars this is money that was given
to the police to the courts and to our
correctional institutions instead of to
our schools our community centers and
our hospitals we should be aiming to
repair the very types of neighborhoods
that Daryl wish to escape from and this
can be done through the funding of
after-school programs
mentorship programs and money to go to
community health centers I think the
most positive thing about the situation
we’re in now cannabis legalization
provides us with an opportunity for
social change that comes with its own funding envelope
I’m gonna start by telling you a story
of two young men let me first introduce
you to Darryl Darryl grew up in a rather
poor area of a midsize city his parents
and older siblings all worked long hours
to ensure he had a comfortable life and
amongst his peers Darryl was often
teased for choosing to study instead of
hanging out and playing video games or
basketball now like most kids his age
Darrel wasn’t immune to peer pressure
and then on their way home from school
many afternoons his friends would stop
in a nearby park to smoke weed now
Darryl usually said no to their
insistence that he join in but on one
afternoon he reluctantly agreed it was a
beautiful day and their last day of high
school classes ever now unfortunately
for Darryl and unbeknownst to him and
his friends he picked a bad time to do
so
the local police had just stepped up
patrols in the area because residents
were complaining about kids in the park
wrapped up in the excitement of Darryl
getting high for the first time none of
the guys noticed two officers
approaching on their bicycles what’s
that smell one of the officers asked the
authoritative tone of the police
sounding all too familiar to these young
men they stopped they looked at the
officers and looked at Darryl and then
back at the officers Darryl stood there
shocked with a spliff in his hands what
it started out as some fun would have a
huge impact on Darryl’s life because of
the problems in the neighborhood
the police were unwilling to give him a
break and so he was charged with drug
possession and having just turned 18 he
was an adult so he was prosecuted in
adult court he might just have been
given a warning but crime was supposedly
on the rise and no one wanted to take it
easy on the kids from the bad
neighborhoods so on the advice of his
court-appointed lawyer who told me
didn’t have much of a case he pled
guilty
now Darryl’s criminal record would
follow him from there on all those hours
spent studying felt futile because as a
result of his record he couldn’t get
financial aid
which shut the door on college none of
the jobs he’d hoped to get as a young
man were available to someone with a
criminal record and so he found himself
sliding in and out of a series of
unfulfilled jobs his life wasn’t
terrible but it wasn’t what he or his
family had expected for him he’d been a
smart kid but he never got to benefit
from the education that comes along with
traveling he never got to move out of
the neighborhood he’d grown up in like
many of his friends and his siblings nor
did he have money to save for his own
now Darryl’s story and brush with the
law makes me think about Ryan also 18
Ryan grew up in a typical middle-class
family he got a car on his 16th birthday
and spent summers and weekends at a
cottage that his parents often reminded
him had been in the family for four
generations now Ryan’s parents worked
long hours leaving him with free rein
over the house and because they were
rarely home in time for dinner they
usually left him money to buy take out
being an enterprising young man Ryan
figured that he could save half the
money his parents had left him for
dinner buy weed with it and then sell
that weed to his friends to make a
healthy profit each week he’d go to a
local college campus he’d buy a couple
of ounces sell it to his friends and
repeat the process the next week now
perhaps it was because of where he lived
what he looked like or given the fact
that none of his friends had been in
trouble with the law before for whatever
reason he never worried about getting
caught but on the way home from a pickup
one night he rolled through a stop sign
and got pulled over by the cops when
asked to hand over his insurance papers
Ryan had to reach into the glove box
where he just stashed his product like
Darryl
Ryan was busted but things didn’t take
such a nasty turn for Ryan the police
called his mom who met him at the
station
and after some strong words and the
suggestion she might call the family
lawyer the police agreed to let Ryan go
he was a good kid from a nice family and
he was heading off to a prestigious
Ryann promised his mom that he wouldn’t
be selling any more weed and he kept his
promise and he also put the money he’d
made into a savings account telling
himself he’d pay his parents back some
of the money they were spending on his
education when he was finished he
graduated from university with big
dreams and a bigger Network and he
thought little about his arrest until it
became apparent that cannabis was going
to be legalized well some people talked
about the social benefits of
legalization Ryan’s colleagues at work
talked about the huge profits that could
be made from legal sales with the help
of a mentor he and a former classmate
developed a business case and started
pitching to venture capitalists their
idea to grow and market high quality
cannabis to baby boomers perhaps
unsurprisingly
their idea caught the attention of some
local investors who helped build the
business the only caveat was that Ryan
would have to come up with 5% of the
startup funds with a good feeling about
his idea and some reassurance he’d sold
pot before Ryan withdrew the money he
said he was gonna pay his parents back
with and used it to found his new
company after a few years of hard work
and with a lot of help Ryan his
colleague as friend were growing and
selling cannabis and the product was
literally flying off the shelves by his
early 30s Ryan had turned the fifteen
thousand dollars he’d made selling
illegal weed into a multi-million dollar
business new life cannabis was a huge
Darryl meanwhile continued to struggle
he had little luck finding steady work
and so one of his friends suggested he
try the local cannabis store now he
didn’t like the idea very much because
of all the trouble that we did got him
in the past but he was desperate to find
a decent paying job he tidied up his
resume put his pride aside and headed
down to the store somewhat nervous and
certainly apprehensive he walked in he
asked for the manager and handed over
his resume a quick glance at his resume
revealed his address still in the very
undesirable part of town the manager
asked in just one question
do you have a criminal record now hoping
the manager would find the irony in his
story
Darryl admitted that he’d been caught
smoking a joint with some friends when
he was young and that he’d been hit with
a possession charge without skipping a
beat the manager handed back his resume
and said I’m sorry but the law won’t
allow new life cannabis to hire someone
with a drug conviction and Darryl’s
story typifies one of the new forms of
injustice stemming from the war on drugs
that’s the inability of people who were
its main targets to benefit from the
fruits of legalization see cannabis
legalization is all around us the
emerging industry has already created
kanna billionaires and their companies
have gone global but all the talk of
economic prosperity has overshadowed
some of the momenta social opportunities
that legalization provides us with now
interestingly I see myself is much more
similar to Darrell than I do to Ryan see
I don’t think I was destined to become a
professor but my passion for uncovering
the type of injustice I’ve just spoken
about started at a young age see I
always enjoyed learning as a child but
the classroom was not the place for me
to do it I was often bored and
disruptive and so I spent more time in
the principal’s office in the hallways
and I care to admit but these
experiences taught me an important
lesson I got to see the profound
influence that individual teachers and
the schools in an institution can have
over the lives of young people well some
of us were suspended or expelled for
acting out similar behavior from other
students was largely ignored now I was
fortunate I graduated from high school
with decent grades might have taken me
six years but I did so and I went to
university to study criminology and when
I did something funny happened I
experienced a form of deja vu not
because I was getting into trouble again
but because I saw the injustice –is
that I’ve been exposed to in my school
years playing out on a mass scale as it
turns out there are a few areas in our
society where injustice is as apparent
as it is in our criminal justice systems
factors like race and socioeconomic
status play a huge role in determining
who gets stopped and searched by the
police who’s convicted in our courts and
who sent to our prisons and as US
criminologist know all too well
it’s the unequal enforcement of our drug
laws it’s a huge driver of these
inequalities as acclaimed poet Tupac
Shakur reminds us instead of a war on
poverty they’ve got a war on drugs
so the police can bother me and I
actually used that line from one of
Tupac songs in a paper I wrote in
university the course drugs the user in
the state and the professor dawn Moore I
remember her fondly it was the first
time I ever got an A in an academic
subject she taught me a lot about what
I’m sharing with you now that for most
of human history drugs were not illegal
that our first drug laws were designed
specifically to target black indigenous
Asian and Latino populations the black
people in America for example are six
times more likely to be arrested for
cannabis possession than white people
even though they use the drug at similar
rates and that these same disparities
exist here as well importantly I learned
how easily had I slipped up I could have
been in Daryl’s shoes rather than
standing here now sharing his story you
see it’s this realization and a
knowledge that I look like one of the
primary targets of the war on drugs this
led me to add my voice to the calls for
progressive measures to be included in
our move towards cannabis legalization I
think making money is great and Canada
has a great head start in terms of
building these businesses but there’s
lots we can do to repair some of what
happened under prohibition as a first
step we should ensure that our
governments erase the criminal records
for people who’ve been convicted of
crimes that are no longer illegal
[Applause]
pardonez aren’t enough pardons leave a
record intact and simply signal that an
individual has been forgiven for doing
wrong or breaking the law
what we need is expungement expungement
completely wipes any trace of that
record clean at least federally and
signals that the government was wrong to
criminalize a behavior in the first
place
cannabis amnesty is a first step forward
secondly we must make sure that the very
people who were targeted by the war on
drugs have an opportunity to benefit
from the fruits of legalization to once
have arrested and incarcerated a group
of people for doing something and then
denying them the ability to benefit from
its newfound legal status only adds
insult to injury think about all the
people in daryl rather than ryan shoes
there are literally hundreds of
thousands of Daryl’s out there people
who will not be able to find jobs in the
new cannabis economy because of previous
cannabis convictions and these insults
are only made worse by the fact that we
now have former police officials and
police leaders running licensed cannabis
companies the very people responsible
for waging the war on drugs get to cash
in well the people they targeted are
left out and finally we should be
pressuring our governments to reinvest
some of the tax revenues generated from
the sale of legal cannabis back into the
communities most harmed by prohibition
enforcing our old laws costs us billions
of dollars this is money that was given
to the police to the courts and to our
correctional institutions instead of to
our schools our community centers and
our hospitals we should be aiming to
repair the very types of neighborhoods
that Daryl wish to escape from and this
can be done through the funding of
after-school programs
mentorship programs and money to go to
community health centers I think the
most positive thing about the situation
we’re in now cannabis legalization
provides us with an opportunity for
social change that comes with its own funding envelope
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