“Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.
Place the towel under the door. Open the window. And hide the pipe.
For decades, college students have found ways to mask the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke on campus. Wanda James, however, didn't always feel the need to hide. A 1986 graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, Ms. James would sit on the steps outside her dorm room and roll 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 on campus, James never worried.
“The worst thing that could happen is they told us to put it away or they took it away from us, and that was it,” Ms. James recalled of 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 leading 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 sort of alternate reality with her cannabis use. She learned how America's marijuana laws have led to black Americans being sentenced to prison at higher rates than white Americans despite nearly equal rates of use, putting her on the mission to which she has dedicated her life. .
James, 60, has owned multiple cannabis businesses over the years, including a pair of dispensaries and an edibles company, giving her a platform to speak out about what she believes are racial injustices. in the industry. She has been at the forefront of the call for cannabis legalization. at the state and federal level. In recent reports, federal scientists have recommended easing restrictions on marijuana, a 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 Colorado governor who appointed Ms. James to a task force that presented recommendations on how to regulate marijuana in Colorado. Those recommendations became a model for the two dozen 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 get involved in an industry that is increasingly mainstream, Ms. James is one of the few Black women playing a leading role. leadership. Several smaller cannabis businesses, mostly run by people of color and women (many of whom were caregivers who saw the benefits of medical marijuana for those they cared for) have been pushed out of the space, James said.
In fact, women's ownership of cannabis businesses fell to 16.4 percent in 2023 from 22.2 percent in 2022 and racial minorities make up just 18.7 percent of owners, according to a report from MMJBiz Daily, a publication covering legal and financial news related to cannabis. .
These days, Ms. James is not only pushing for broader cannabis legalization (recreational use of the plant is legal in 24 states and the District of Columbia, but illegal at the federal level), but also for reform in the industry to ensure more people search like her occupy leadership roles.
She believes that by becoming a dispensary owner and now a leader in an industry with policies that have historically harmed black and Latino Americans, she could regain some power for targeted minorities in communities that were hotbeds for marijuana arrests. In New York, for example, state cannabis regulators documented a staggering 1.2 million marijuana arrests that disproportionately targeted black and Latino Americans over 42 years.
“There's so much going on in the industry that it hasn't been a promising place to see diversity as a positive thing right now,” he 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 inclination towards animal care 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 ROTC program at the University of Colorado. She served four years in the Navy before moving to Los Angeles, where she worked for two Fortune 100 companies. She also met her husband, Scott Durrah, then a property manager in West Hollywood and a fellow pot smoker, with whom she opened several restaurants in Colorado. and California. Ms. James' Rottweiler, Onyx, was the bridesmaid at her wedding.
As the couple built their businesses, the country was feeling the long-term impact of President Ronald Reagan's tough policies on cannabis. Reagan's Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (the year James graduated from college) “flooded the federal system with people convicted of low-level drug offenses and no violent,” according to the Brennan Center. for justice. In 2007, nearly 800,000 people were arrested for simple possession of marijuana, the FBI reported. About 80 percent of those arrested were black. .
“They were the demographic least likely to have a family friend who was a lawyer and the least likely to have parents or family money to be able to get them out of the situation that night,” Ms. James said.
Those statistics remained a priority for Ms. James as she pursued ownership of a cannabis business 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 Colorado Apothecary, a medical cannabis dispensary , becoming the first African Americans to own a legal dispensary in the United States. They later closed the medical dispensary to open a grocery company, Simply Pure, which in 2015 became Simply Pure Denver, a recreational dispensary.
“She's a pioneer,” said Tahir Johnson, Ms. James' apprentice. “When you think of a strong black woman, that's what she embodies.”
When she became an entrepreneur and marijuana policymaker, she had a personal reference point that she has returned to often in her work: her half-brother, who served time in prison for crimes such as marijuana possession.
Ms. James has shared her journey in short documentaries produced by The Atlantic and Yahoo, and in 2018, High Times magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the cannabis industry. She has used her platform to call for federal legalization of cannabis, which would help dispensary owners pump some of the money they have been paying in taxes into their businesses, increasing the likelihood of creating “generational wealth,” she said. ; Because recreational cannabis remains federally illegal, dispensary owners cannot write off basic expenses such as staff salaries, unlike businesses that do not market cannabis.
And he's leveraging his network to create change. Starting with Mr. Johnson, her apprentice, 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.
Johnson said he had been arrested three times for marijuana possession and was “honored” that James chose him to carry on his legacy. He plans to open Simply Pure Trenton soon.
“The fact that she trusted me to take on this responsibility in the next phase of the organization means a lot to me,” he said.
