EDITOR’S NOTE: Entrepreneurs everywhere are eyeing the billion-dollar legal weed industry, an economic opportunity unrivaled in modern N.J. history. NJ Cannabis Insider features exclusive and premium weekly content geared toward those interested in the marijuana industry. View a sample issue. As New Jersey’s lawmakers consider whether to legalize the use of recreational marijuana, it’s instructive to assess the benefits and be clear-eyed about the potential consequences.

By Lyneir Richardson

New Jersey will, whether by legislation or referendum, sooner or later harvest the economic benefits of legalized marijuana. I hope that, while capturing new tax revenue, we ensure the new weed-based business opportunities help the communities most damaged by prohibition.

Legalized cannabis is a high growth industry, with U.S. legalized sales projected to reach $75 billion in the next decade. Here in New Jersey, it is expected to become a nearly $2 billion industry, likely to outsell wine in its first full year.

At the Rutgers Business School, I work to build the capacity of local entrepreneurs and teach reality-based business practices and urban economic development strategy to MBA students. I often unabashedly guide entrepreneurs to “get high:” start or expand a business in a high-growth industry, and sell a product or service with a high profit margin. I have lately been shining the light on legal weed for these reasons.

Legalizing recreational marijuana provides a unique moment for New Jersey to foster inclusive economic development for people of color, specifically African Americans, who have been disproportionately adversely impacted by the criminalization of marijuana.

Applause is especially due to lawmakers who have been fighting to make sure the enacted legislation includes mandates for issuing licenses to minorities, micro licenses for small business owners and targeting licenses to areas with higher poverty, unemployment and drug arrest records. These type of provisions are essential if we are to seize the moment and create new business opportunities for people and in places that are often overlooked and undervalued.

Economic development leaders should launch initiatives and support business training programs to help people of color start and grow weed and weed-affiliated businesses – everything from creating physical and digital ways to connect customers with producers, to logistics and supply chains, to consultants who can help weed businesses navigate what is sure to be an ever-changing maze of state and federal laws, rules and banking regulations.

The state should also create tax incentives and requirements for local and minority hiring that will position people of color not just to participate in this new growth, but to lead and drive it. And we should make it a year-one priority to open marijuana dispensaries in places like Newark, Camden, Trenton, East Orange, Atlantic City, and Asbury Park, which have had a 50-year history of racial disparity in marijuana-related arrests.

People are justified in arguing that we do not yet know the unintended societal costs of legal weed. However, I am confident that we will deal with them just as we have with problems related to tobacco and liquor sales. Simply stated, the economic benefits are needed today and outweigh the arguments for prohibition. We can always make adjustments and enact regulations and restrictions in the future if necessary for public health and safety reasons.

I do not like the smell of marijuana. But I can smell a robust inclusive economic development opportunity in legal weed for entrepreneurs in New Jersey. I like it, and you should too.

Lyneir Richardson is assistant professor of professional practice and the executive director of The Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development (CUEED) at Rutgers Business School in Newark. He has served as CEO of the primary economic development corporation in Newark under mayors Cory Booker and Ras Baraka, and is a former vice president of urban development at General Growth Properties, Inc.

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