“Continuing down the path of aggressive and over-punitive immigration policies poses a direct threat to the future of this industry.”
By Ishaq Ali, Latino Cannabis Alliance
Behind the sleek tech-adjacent branding and modern marketing of today’s cannabis industry lies a far older, unvarnished truth: cannabis is, at its heart, an agricultural product and Latinos are the majority of the agricultural labor, making up a staggering 92 percent of California’s overall agricultural workforce and 77 percent of the U.S. agricultural workforce.
The cannabis industry mirrors this demographic reality; Latinos are the largest ethnic group of workers in the legally regulated cannabis sector at 38 percent, a figure that surges to 56–65 percent in cultivation-specific roles.
If we do not regulate cannabis with the Latino community in mind or immigration implications included, we miss critical aspects about how the sector can be developed and more importantly who works in that sector. Continuing down the path of aggressive and over-punitive immigration policies poses a direct threat to the future of this industry.
To avoid these pitfalls, it is imperative that Latino voices are properly represented in data and policy.
At a ‘legacy industry’ retreat in 2023, a panel of California cannabis regulators were
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