Continuing on my work last week, I completed the film “The Union: The Business Behind Getting High” (2007) which continued to offer interesting insights on the marijuana industry. The trade industry in British Columbia often duped “BC Bud,” becomes the real focus of this film. With 85% of their annual growth being sent to the US, this offers a really interesting look at the functionality of marijuana as an illegal trade. With inside looks at things like “grow ops” and their profitability, this films shows how marijuana business thrives in its illegality. (7 billions dollar income, people call the industry “The Union” –> see notes about breakdown of “The Union”) But, as we know – marijuana legalization is evolving and so what happens when it does get legalized is of particular interest. I received an article from ILL titled, “Good moral characters”: how drug felons are impacted under state marijuana legalization laws.” The content within the article is quite self-explanatory based on the title. The break down of both statistics and analysis gave me exactly what I was looking for based on where I ended last week. When laws fail to recognize discriminatory outcomes and only acknowledge intent, there exists an inherent racial bias in the court of law and people of color are targeted. The author, Beverly Yuen Thompson stands by the legalization of marijuana as a way of combatting the war on drugs. In the beginning of this article, a Michelle Alexander quote read, “After 40 years of impoverished black men getting prison time for selling weed, white men are planning to get rich doing the same things. So that’s why I think we have to start talking about reparations for the war on drugs. How do we repair the harms caused?” This comes from her book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Upon looking it up, I am interested in Alexander’s research. She says in her book, “by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.” I think that down the stretch, this factor could end up playing an important (in one way or another) role in how the Millennials navigate their relationship with weed. So, I guess next week my intentions are to continue to develop areas that I have already begun, but also head in the direction of directly engaging with material that connects to millennials.