Online Conference Asks: How do Pasadena Cannabis Shops Give Back to Pasadena?

More than a score of community activists, would-be entrepreneurs, and licensed cannabis dealers participated Thursday in an online conference, “Cannabis Business & Community Reinvestment: A Conversation,” designed to generate ideas and opportunities for small businesses and the community to join or benefit from Pasadena’s limited but lucrative cannabis marketplace.

The meeting also discussed best ways for existing cannabis sellers in Pasadena to return portions of their investment and profits to the local community that supports them.

The wide-ranging discussion was moderated by Jessica Neuwirth and Clarissa Lliff of BOTEC Analysis, hired by the City of Pasadena to facilitate the discussion.

As Lliff told the group, community reinvestment is also about social equity.

“The goal of social equity,” Lliff said, “is to ensure that people from communities disproportionately harmed by cannabis prohibition and discriminatory law enforcement, benefit from cannabis legalization.”

Lliff added that Pasadena requires that local cannabis businesses commit to investing in the impact of communities here in Pasadena, and that “that includes enhancing education or youth development programs and violence prevention, and can often look like volunteering, making donations, sponsoring nonprofit events here in Pasadena.

“Often when we think of community investment affecting individuals,” she continued, “individuals who have been negatively impacted by the war on drugs, we often think we stop at the individual who was arrested and forget about the waves that it makes in our communities. That one individual is so important and we should be focusing on that.”

Lliff then posed the question to the participants, “How should Pasadena Cannabis business contribute to the community?”

As “Raul” noted, his choice was for the city to provide space for community engagement (for vendors), as a type of business resource fair where vendors could meet cannabis shop owners.

“I think the way to be able to normalize something like this,” he said, “is through socialization, by having people meet together. And honestly, if anyone can take this idea and run with it, but you have food festivals, maybe having something like that, where vendors can come and the small business owners of the cannabis industry, and bringing in food trucks and doing some type of event like that”

More specifically, “”Gina” offered that two organizations that would benefit directly from contributions from cannabis shops would be Day One and the Pasadena Complete Streets Coalition.

She added, “Our streets are unsafe. I think late last year, a woman got hit by a car and unfortunately passed away. And so I believe these organizations have tried to pressure the city to get some of that funding to work on this. She added that she had spoken to the executive director of Complete Streets who emphasized that “The streets of Pasadena are unsafe for Pasadena residents, especially young people who are walking to and from school.”

In addition, she named Day One, a 30 year-old community-based nonprofit organization working with “culturally-sensitive” public health education, intervention, and policy development issues in the San Gabriel Valley.

Another participant suggested a program similar to a program in Miami, known as the Children’s Trust, but in which local businesses “tax” themselves to provide money for a fund which supports micro grants for community organizations which support children’s programs. (In Miami’s Children’s Trust the funds are raised differently, through a property tax approved by voters.)

Other participants called for local growers to be given priority or some type of “favored nation” agreement in which local cannabis shops would agree to purchase cannabis products from Pasadena growers as part of their ongoing sales inventory.

Tim Dodd, of SweetFlower, one of the limited number of licensed cannabis shops in Pasadena, said he agreed with all the suggestions offered and pointed out that, “I do think there’s a distinction to be made between commercial cannabis operators, such as Essence, Harvest, SweetFlower, and Varda, and other stores.

“I think it’s incumbent on people like us to help,” Dodd added. “I think it means mentoring, entrepreneurship, money, tax dollars, and also some community investment programs that are meaningful.”

“I think you need to have strong safeguards,” he added. “You need to have some community funding. The city of Pasadena needs to support these things with money, skills, and entrepreneurship.”