The woman behind a cannabis education and advocacy platform is launching a new professional networking organization, with the goal of increasing minority participation in the state’s medical marijuana industry.
Jacquie Cohen Roth, the founder of CannabizMD, will launch another cannabis-focused organization Thursday. The professional networking group will have a focus on “breaking down barriers to entry” within the Maryland industry, which is still young but has already faced a slew of diversity challenges.
The group, called Tea Pad, will center on networking and continuing education for existing cannabis industry players as well as people looking for ways to get involved in the industry. The organization’s name is a nod to a concept that cropped up in the 1920s and 1930s, during the prohibition era, Cohen Roth explained. Tea pads were kind of like speakeasies, where people could gather to consume marijuana and listen to music, without fear of judgement or prejudice. Tea Pad will launch with an inaugural event Thursday evening, and Cohen Roth said the group will continue hosting events every other month.
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Funds raised through Tea Pad will also be used to fund a merit-based scholarship that Cohen Roth hopes to award to an African American student entrepreneur attending Morgan State University twice a year. The first scholarship — the amount of which is to be determined — will be awarded for the spring 2020 semester, she said. She hopes to ultimately expand scholarship opportunities to other historically black colleges and universities in Maryland.
“For decades minorities were the cannabis industry, and that’s been used to persecute them,” Cohen Roth said. “It’s important that they be given every opportunity to share in the wealth to be generated as we move away from prohibition, and I want to challenge the industry to ‘walk the talk’ of diversity and inclusion.”
Maryland’s burgeoning cannabis industry has faced diversity challenges in its formative years.
A bill that was passed in the 2018 legislative session allowed for the creation of 20 new pre-approved operating licenses for marijuana growers and processors. The intent behind these additional licenses was to increase the participation of small, minority and women business owners and entrepreneurs in the medical cannabis industry. The legislation move was in response to outcry after African American business owners were largely left out of the first round of cannabis business licensing in 2016. A disparity study ordered by Gov. Larry Hogan also highlighted that the state industry lacked representation of women and minority business owners, likely causing those groups to miss out on the economic opportunities available in the growing market for medical marijuana.
Regulators in the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission were instructed by lawmakers to put a greater focus on diversity in a new license application round. That round, seeking applicants for 14 new growing and processing operations was launched in March, after the commission spent several months revamping the licensing process and putting $225,000 in grant funding behind education and training programming to prepare potential applicants.
Cohen Roth said as cannabis industry players in Maryland focus on fixing approaches to diversity, she hopes Tea Pad will help “create an equal playing field, and help more people find a way into the industry.” She said the industry has an opportunity to repair some of the damage done to minority communities over the years through marijuana criminalization.
A Tea Pad launch party will be held Thursday evening, following a CannabizMD conference being held at the Westin Hotel at BWI. Omar Muhammad, director of the Entrepreneurial Development and Assistance Center at Morgan State, will be a featured speaker at Tea Pad’s first event. Muhammad is also a regular columnist for the Baltimore Business Journal.
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