Cannabis Prohibition’s Racist Roots (Episode 7)

Cannabis Prohibition’s Racist Roots - featuring The Equity Organization’s Founder & Executive Director Natalie Papillion (Episode 7). In this extended episode, we tackle an important topic: racism and its relationship to cannabis prohibition. Host Bobby Black welcomes the founder and executive director of The Equity Organization Natalie Papillion to talk about the history of racism and cannabis. From the fear of black jazz musicians and Mexican immigrants in the 1920s and 30s to Nixon’s targeting of black and Jewish activists in the early 1970s; from the mandatory minimum sentences of the 1980s to stop and frisk in the 1990s; from mass incarceration and asset forfeiture to voter disenfranchisement and the inequities of the burgeoning cannabis industry—we lay out all of the racist rhetoric and sobering statistics, and discuss what might be done to remedy the systemic issues we face.  Natalie Papillion is a writer, researcher, and Yale graduate who contributed to the 2014 American Book Award-winning Jim Crow Freedom: Memory and Identity in Black America Since 1940 and author of the upcoming book Reefer Madness: The Roots of Marijuana Prohibition in America. She’s also the Founder and Executive Director of The Equity Organization, a nonprofit organization working to advance fair, effective, and equitable criminal justice and drug policy reforms. 




The World of Cannabis Museum Project Presents Cannthropology—the potcast that explores the history of cannabis culture one artifact and interview at a time. Hosted by World of Cannabis executive director and marijuana media icon Bobby Black. In each episode, Bobby chooses a different item(s) from the museum's collection of around 500 rare antiques, artifacts, and artworks, and welcomes a different guest to help him explore the item’s significance and place in cannabis history.