On February 2, 2023, the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (“LCB”) released an update regarding the interactive mapping tool for determining whether people meet have lived in Disproportionately Impacted Areas (“DIA”). As we wrote about here, having lived in a DIA for at least five years between 1980 and 2010 is one of three possible eligibility criteria for the forthcoming Social Equity in Cannabis (“SEIC”) program, which opens for applications March 1. We wrote about that here. The map can be found by a link on the LCB’s website, or here.
Increased threshold rate in the new DIA map
Prior to the update, to qualify as a DIA, an individual census tract must have been in the top 20% on all of the following indicators:
high poverty rate; high rate of participation in income-based federal programs; High rate of unemployment; and High rate of convictions.
The update states the LCB has increased the qualifying threshold to now include census tracts in the top 30% of the above factors. We note our concerns from a recent post about the mapping tool that while it may be safe to assume that it relies on 10-year national census data, it
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