BACCHUS LAW

Movses Shakarian

Los Angeles City Council: Petition to Include LGBTQ community in LA Cannabis Social Equity Program

We call on the Los Angeles City Council to include the LGBTQ community in the Los Angeles Cannabis Social Equity Program for priority licensing. We petition the Council to expand protections intended by the Social Equity Program to include LGBTQ individuals. The LGBTQ community has been a guiding role in the Compassionate Use Act (Proposition 215) for medicinal cannabis, while being disproportionately punished by the prohibition of cannabis.

The Los Angeles City Council recently moved to create a Social Equity Program for cannabis licensing. This program’s purpose is to serve “those individuals and communities that were disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition.” The LGBTQ community should be included in the program for the excessive harm we experienced by the prohibition of cannabis. Born out of the need to help the LGBTQ community extremely suffering from the AIDS epidemic, the LGBTQ community started and led the drafting of the Compassionate Use Act. Many members of the LGBTQ community were jailed for medicinal cannabis and continued to suffer during the War on Drugs. Statistics are hard to come by due to a lack of interest at the time for insight into the LGBTQ community. Hundreds of thousands of AIDS patients were suffering through death across the country and being prosecuted for finding relief.

The LGBTQ community was unquestionably the core driving force behind the earliest efforts to provide access to medical cannabis in California. The LGBTQ community deserves the opportunity to have our rightful place in the Los Angeles cannabis industry by way of inclusion in the City’s Social Equity Program.