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More than 30 years ago, Abdullah Muhammad decided weed wasn’t for him.
“I always had kind of a negative view of anything cannabis, which is why I’ve actually never even tried cannabis,” said Muhammad, owner of Gage 313, a dispensary on Detroit’s westside.
A series of events in the early 1990s cemented his perspective. His brother, a wide receiver at Michigan State University, was arrested during a traffic stop — violating his probation for a previous marijuana conviction. He was suspended from the team and sentenced to 90 days in jail.
His brother went on to have a noteworthy career in the NFL. But the incident stuck with Muhammad. How many promising Black lives were stalled or ended because of the “war on drugs?”
Fast-forward three decades. Recreational marijuana is now legal in Michigan and many other states. Detroit passed an ordinance in early 2022 to allow sales in the city, with a focus on helping longtime Detroiters — especially those affected by marijuana criminalization — build wealth through the industry.
But three years later, it’s not clear those goals are being met.
Detroit’s original ordinance called for prioritizing “legacy” Detroiters — people with a long history in the city, low-income status or past marijuana convictions — and offered steep discounts on licensing fees and city-owned property.
A judge struck down the law, calling it “likely unconstitutional,” and councilmembers rewrote it to focus on “equity” instead. The city now prioritizes applications that partner established business owners with residents from communities hit hardest by prohibition.
The policy hasn’t lived up to its promises, said Biyyiah Lee, a public health nurse, cannabis researcher and co-founder of Midwest CannaNurses. Lee also helped draft the ordinance.
“Great effort and great intention,” she said, “but does it translate into ownership for Detroiters, or ownership for Black people in this industry that had us criminalized? Not really.”
Lee said financial barriers remain, and the collaborations between equity applicants and their bigger business partners often fall apart — or only exist on paper.
“On the application, they would go in with a 51%/49% partnership in favor of the Detroiter or person of color. However, what are the profit splits like? What is the actual ownership behind the companies that have the license? That’s where things get a little tricky,” Lee said.
To Muhammad — an equity applicant himself — real estate is the bigger obstacle. “There are people who will throw money at you if you have a good location. … The problem for Black folks is we don’t own a lot of real estate in locations that can be a cannabis store,” he said.
While most small businesses can open almost anywhere, weed dispensaries are restricted to “green zones” — at least 1,000 feet from schools, churches, parks, and 500 feet from other cannabis facilities.
Trinity Dekiere, general manager of Simply Loud, a dispensary owned by her grandfather. Photo credit: Cydni Elledge/Outlier Media
Money still plays a critical role, said Lee. Lack of capital is a major challenge for many of Detroit’s Black-owned dispensaries. Most are mom-and-pop shops that opened before statewide cannabis chains moved in. But they’ve struggled to expand or even stay well-stocked, based on visits to several shops in the city.
One major disadvantage is a lack of funding for “vertical integration,” Lee said. Big cannabis companies hold three licenses — to grow, sell and process — allowing them to control supply and maximize profit. With more cash on hand, they can buy prime, green-zoned real estate and scale quickly. Most small dispensaries can’t.
“This thing is not cheap,” Lee emphasized. “Once you pay for your license in one place, that doesn’t mean that the license just transfers over to wherever you (want to) take it. You’re still having to pay each municipality in order to operate there. You have to secure property that is zoned for cannabis business … and a lot of dispensaries have to purchase their products wholesale.”
In fact, many small shops depend on the big companies for inventory.
Conglomerates “may have unmarked grow buildings, potentially all over the city, all over the state,” Lee said. “They have another processing lab where they can go and take their flower and turn it into tinctures, turn it into edibles, and then put it on their shelves. It doesn’t work that way for a lot of small dispensaries.”
Despite the challenges, physician Dr. David Hazel recently opened Simply Loud, a dispensary in Detroit’s Milwaukee Junction neighborhood. His granddaughter, Trinity Dekiere, manages the shop. Their goal: promote the medicinal uses of cannabis and build generational wealth.
Dekiere said marijuana still carries stigma — especially for Black communities — thanks to decades of racialized criminalization. People assume cannabis users are lazy or unmotivated. But that stereotype doesn’t reflect the customers she sees.
“I see all different types of people come in here,” she said. The old, the young, the college student and the professor.”
Even her 96-year-old grandmother.
“My grandma has arthritis, and she vapes,” Dekiere said. “But as she ages, she finds that sometimes the smoke bothers her, so she also uses gummies. It’s part of why I love this industry.
“When you go to the doctor, they prescribe you a pill. That’s all you know. That’s what you take. But cannabis offers so many different alternatives. You can eat it, you can drink it, you can smoke it, you can rub it on you. The possibilities are endless.”
To grow Black-owned cannabis businesses, Lee wants to see creative strategies for funding — and she urges people to shop small, local and Black-owned.
Smaller dispensaries often can’t offer the kind of discounts their larger counterparts are able to — but she says customers should spend their money there anyway.
“They are … trying to make a way, not only for themselves, but for other people that look like us to be in the industry,” she said. “So definitely patronize them when you can, because they need it.”
“}]] Detroit passed an ordinance in 2022 allowing weed sales in the city. But is it helping Black-owned dispensaries? Read More
