The marijuana industry’s many faces: Q&A with California Minority Alliance co-founder Virgil Grant

By John Schroyer

Virgil Grant has been a staple in the Los Angeles cannabis industry since 2002, having run six unlicensed dispensaries before spending nearly five years in jail.

His legal issues started when one of his dispensaries was targeted in a DEAraid, one of many at the time.

After his release in 2015 on a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration-spurredfederal drug conspiracy conviction, Grant opened a dispensary near where he grew up in south Los Angeles.

And last year, with his legal issues behind but not forgotten, Grant co-founded the California Minority Alliance to help blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities land executive-level roles in the marijuana trade. He noted the fear of jail has discouraged many from joining the industry.

Grant, 49, who began his first collective in Compton in 2002, spoke with

Whats the need for the California Minority Alliance?

We felt a need to have a minority organization to represent minorities within the cannabis industry. There are 187 dispensaries (that have been in existence in Los Angeles since the city imposed a moratorium on new, licensed dispensaries in 2007) and only four African-Americans that own any of those. So the minority interests and voice and representation has been underrepresented in this industry.

We created this organization to bring more minority interests into the industry, minorities that dont have the information or the education or the financial wherewithal to get involved.

Is there one primary obstacle you see in terms of why more minorities havent yet gotten into the cannabis industry?

Jail Theyre afraid to go to jail.

You have to remember that African-Americans are four times as likely to go to prison as a white person doing the same identical crime. Latinos are twice as likely. So the fear of going to jail has kept us out of the industry. Not because we didnt have interest.

And now, since the feds have been pushed back from the industry and a lot of these regulations, with the MCRSA (Californias Medical Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act) coming in and Prop 64 passing, all of these cities are stepping up and taking a leading role in how their city is going to be regulated.

It makes us more comfortable in getting into the industry, because the safety net is there and the fear of going to prison is less.

How many members do you have?

Right now, close to 300 members. Its been building pretty quick. And when we say minorities, its not just African-Americans. Its Latinos, its Asians so were representing the whole minority interest, and people have been signing up fast.

All those members, do they have their own businesses, or are they staffers? What roles do they have?

Theyre people that are already presently functioning in the industry and people who are looking to get into the industry.

The overwhelming majority of our membership are people who are already circulating within the industry, either via testing, concentrates, manufacturing, cultivation, shop owners or whatever.

Aside from those four shop owners you mentioned, do you have any other numbers in terms of what percentage of the cannabis industry in California is made up of minorities?

The minority numbers are represented in the workforce, not ownership. So my main concern initially was ownership, not just being a consumer or a worker, but actually having an equity stake in the industry, like myself. But the majority are workforce. Theyre budtenders, theyre blue-collar workers for manufacturers and cultivators.

What Im looking to do is open up the industry. Were working closely with the city council; were trying to form an equity piece for minorities, similar to what Oakland and Berkeley did, to set aside some licenses for minorities.

The overwhelming majority of L.A. City Council members are interested in ...