A new report from the Massachusetts Cannabis Control Commission reveals that a lack of diversity persists at the senior leadership level across the cannabis industry despite Massachusetts's mandate to ensure full participation of communities disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs.
The report, which is required by law and was initially due in December 2023 but is a year late, was presented to the commission on February 25 by the commission's head of research, Julie Johnson. It showed that white individuals occupy 77 percent of senior-level positions, while Hispanic professionals hold four percent, Black professionals hold five percent and Asian professionals hold five percent of these positions.
These numbers have improved since the last report, which came out in 2020, when 84 percent of the senior leadership was white, only 4 percent was Black and 3 percent was Hispanic, but they still lag behind demographic trends. According to census data as of 2023, Massachusetts's population is 69.6 percent white, 9.5 percent Black or African American and 7.7 percent Asian. And 13.1 percent of the population identifies as being Hispanic or Latino across all of the races. Senior leadership positions refer to board members, directors, executives and managers, to name a few.
"If our stated goal was to ensure that the folks who were affected were supposed to get first access to this industry, then yeah, we could do better," said Ryan Dominguez, the head of the Massachusetts Cannabis Coalition. "There is definitely always room for improvement, especially if those are the numbers that we're seeing, because there is a lot of interest for folks to be able to access the cannabis industry."
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