Oregon cannabis industry leaders to legalize marijuana

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY), was joined by Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden (D, OR) and Sen. Cory Booker (D, NJ), in a press conference last month to outline the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act, which would legalize marijuana across all 50 states and provide more chances for historically marginalized communities to partake in the multi-billion dollar industry.

The bill would also direct the federal Small Business Administration to create programs helping connect economically disadvantaged communities to entrepreneurial funding to establish businesses within the cannabis sector. That effort resembles work Oregon marijuana advocates and business leaders have tried done in recent years to eliminate a gross lack of diversity in the state's industry, both in production and sales.

Jesce Horton, the founder and chief executive of LOWD, a recreationally licensed cannabis production and wholesale company based in Portland, is a board member of the Oregon Cannabis Association, one of the state's foremost advocacy and lobbying groups for cannabis interests.

He and his wife Jeannette Ward Horton are also two of the most outspoken advocates for bringing an equity lens to legalization efforts and shaping the growth of Oregon's cannabis industry to help people from traditionally marginalized communities enter the business. Jeannette Ward Horton is the chief executive of the NuLeaf Project, which aims to help communities most targeted by criminalization build intergenerational wealth via the legal cannabis industry.

According to Horton, it will be important for Oregon's industry leaders to take part in a robust public input process Sen. Schumer highlighted to drive the conversation around this bill in a way that focuses on trying to right historical wrongs.

"The only way to help reconcile is to make sure that we're using the tax dollars, the economic opportunity, the entrepreneurial or small business opportunities, to help to uplift those communities," he said.

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Photo: U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, shown here at a 2020 forum at Tigard High School, says Oregon offers lessons and hope for what federal decriminalization could mean for the cannabis industry.

Credit: Donald Orr / OPB

Source: OPB