The sales of the the drug marijuana are booming, and D.C. wants to make sure black people can cash in on the gold rush. The D.C. Council recently joined a handful of other states that have passed bills to give minorities preference in the application process for medical marijuana licenses.

Pennsylvania, Florida, Ohio, Oakland and California all have diversity requirements.

While the legislation is still waiting for the mayor’s signature, it does seem to have her approval. Democrat D.C. Mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, spokesman says her office is still reviewing the legislation, but steps are being taken by her administration to implement it.

In the past few months, based upon its view that racial disparities in how drug laws were enforced, the city has ended its policy against allowing felons convicted of possession with the intent to distribute from entering the booming medical marijuana industry.

Some supporters of efforts like this say this is a way to make up for the “wrongs” of blacks having been arrested on marijuana charges more often than whites.

In Massachusetts, for example, their ballot was the first to draft detailed language to address communities deemed “disproportionately harmed by marijuana prohibition and enforcement.” Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida also have rules on the books to increase the number of blacks in the drug business.

Suggestions have been made that it is much harder for blacks, and minorities, to get these drug licenses for a couple of reasons. The main reasons being rules disqualifying applicants people with prior convictions, banks not interested in supporting this type of business and and complaints that state licensing boards tend to favor established or politically connected applicants.

Sponsoring council member, Democrat Robert C. White Jr., said, “We at the D.C. government have an obligation to make sure that minorities and local small businesses can get in on the ground floor and secure a piece of this foundation.”

“We have locked up so many black people for marijuana, and I see it as incredibly hypocritical for those folks to return from prison on marijuana charges just to come back to a place that has now legalized and industrialized it, and they can’t play any role.”

While D.C. is not outside of the mainstream in their efforts to get blacks into the marijuana industry, they are outside of norm when it comes to their performance of educating blacks in order to get them into more established, accepted industries.

In most D.C. public schools, white students make up less than 5% of the student body, and in the total school system, whites make up less than 10%.

So all moves made to improve, or lower, the standards and performance of these schools disproportionately affects black kids.

D.C. is often ranked at the bottom in terms of national rankings of public school systems. A recent study ranked our nation’s capital school district the second worst in America. Many reports highlight the city’s poorly performing school district. The D.C. public system has the lowest math, reading and SAT scores of any school system in the U.S. and the highest dropout rate, at 59%, in 2014. It is clear that the district has plenty of areas they can improve.

So why is the D.C. city council drafting up emergency measures to talk a couple of marijuana growers while over 48,000 kids languish and get their dreams crushed before they even reach voting age?

D.C. has had many public spats over schooling in the not so distant past, not because of poor performance, but over school reform.

Years ago, it was Michelle Rhee trying to reform the school system, seeing it as a civil rights fight to improve the lives of blacks. Her straightforward, no nonsense rhetoric and demanding of results was not received well. In fact, some events were disrupted by chants of “Rhee-ject her” and “Rhee-diculous.”

Bill Turque, a Washington Post writer familiar with Rhee, after covering her for many years, says, “By making it clear that she thought they had failed at their jobs, she was not only taking on a union, but she was taking on really what was the core of the black middle class in the District.”

Taking on the teachers unions and their backers prevented Rhee from achieving the goals she dreamed of. The task of improving the nations schools now falls to Betsy Devos, and she has already received a very public push-back in D.C.

One anonymous teacher, who does not know Ms. Devos, criticized the new Education Secretary and even impugned her motives. “Betsy DeVos does not represent our students or our families here in D.C.,” the teacher said. “She doesn’t have our best interests at heart.”

For many decades D.C.’s Democrat run city had fought passionately to protect the status quo and teachers unions. Now the city’s new measure seems to open up a new fight, ensuring felons get a chance to enter the drug business.

Some studies say this hurts the community, while others would argue it helps create lucrative careers for minorities, what is not debatable is the fact that the D.C. city council could be pushing for more trade schools to open up? It is a well known fact that skills such as welding and plumbing have a shortage of people and pay very well.

Where are the higher expectations for their black constituents from the left? If the District wants to help blacks, vocational schools offer a great, legal, noble way to do that. Trade schools give blacks a quicker, cheaper and more stable way of entering into the American dream.

Emergency bills to pass policies to encourage this path in life is much more beneficial to all, than a bill to help felons go back to their old way of life in the drug world. Is the D.C. city council trying to change the American dream to being a drug dealer? No more white picket fences and 2.5 kids for these people, now it’s a white cloud of smoke and 2.5 grams.