https://www.theroot.com/cynthia-nixon-catches-heat-for-calling-cannabis-license-1825850510Cynthia Nixon Catches Heat for Calling Cannabis Licenses in Black Community a ‘Form of Reparations’
Anne Branigin
In an interview with Forbes magazine Saturday, Cynthia Nixon, the former Sex and the City star and current New York gubernatorial candidate, told the outlet that communities of color most devastated by decades of the country’s war on drugs should get first priority when it comes to licenses to sell legal cannabis.
“Now that cannabis is exploding as an industry, we have to make sure that those communities that have been harmed and devastated by marijuana arrests get the first shot at this industry,” Nixon told Forbes. “We [must] prioritize them in terms of licenses. It’s a form of reparations.”
The comments have drawn criticism from several prominent black leaders and organizations for conflating reparations—in this case, government repayment for hundreds of years of stolen and exploited black labor—with equitable participation in the cannabis industry.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, Manhattan Democratic Party Chairman Keith Wright and Black Lives Matter of Greater New York all spoke out against Nixon’s comments, the New York Daily News reports.
“I’m for legalizing marijuana and I like Cynthia Nixon but putting pot shops in our communities is not reparations,” Sharpton wrote on Twitter Monday morning, adding that health care and education were more suitable points of focus.
Even the good Rev calls out this twit...the disease is metastasizing.
