Social Equity with Karim Webb [Video]

Substantial capital and access to capital are needed to start and run a successful cannabis business. Licensing costs alone can be upwards of $100,000, startup capital could be in the millions (depending on the license type), and operating costs are anything but light.
Operating a cannabis business isn’t like opening up an online website. There’s a punitive tax code and entrepreneurs can’t access capital through traditional routes due to cannabis still being federally illegal.
Cannabis social equity programs are a way to remove barriers that have kept the populations most impacted by cannabis prohibition out of the legal market.
The thought behind social equity is to give those that had been impacted by the war on drugs an opportunity to participate in the “green economy.”
Without social equity programs, many African-American, Latino-American, and Native-American communities, who have historically lacked access to capital wouldn’t have an opportunity to participate in this billion-dollar industry.