For good reason, about 150 million people use cannabis, according to the World Health Organization. That’s  around 3 percent of the global population or the entire population of  Russia. In most places, smoking the flowers or extracts of this plant  can come with some steep legal consequences: long prison sentences,  heavy fines, loss of civil rights, the state may take away your kids or  deny you medical care. You may even get executed.

For some of us, especially if we live in places where cannabis is  legal, such dire consequences for using cannabis can seem like a distant  nightmare. But even as we slowly emerge from the dark ages of marijuana  prohibition, we’re encountering entirely predictable problems:  unchecked capitalist greed. So yes, while it’s worth celebrating our  emergence from the dark ages of cannabis prohibition, we risk entering  into different forms of prohibition, oppression and inequality at the  hands of the so-called “free market.”

Narcotica co-host Troy Farah talks with Shaleen Title, an  Indian-American attorney and longtime drug policy activist who has been  writing, passing, and implementing equitable cannabis laws for over 20  years. She is a former top regulator for the state of Massachusetts,  where she served as commissioner of the Cannabis Control Commission from  2017 to 2020. She is the author of “Fair and Square: How to Effectively  Incorporate Social Equity Into Cannabis Laws and Regulations” and  “Bigger is Not Better: Preventing Monopolies in the National Cannabis  Market.”  Currently, her primary focus is running the nonprofit think  tank Parabola Center, which pushes for cannabis policies to protect  people rather than corporate profits.

Follow Shaleen on Twitter at: @shaleentitle

Read Bigger is Not Better: Preventing Monopolies in the National Cannabis Market

If you liked this episode, here are others you might enjoy:
Episode 63: Delta-8-THC And Other Obscure Cannabinoids with Jason Wilson
Episode 58: How Racism Fuels The Drug War with Kassandra Frederique
Episode 53: A Life of Getting Lit with Tommy Chong

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Producers: Christopher Moraff, Troy Farah, Zachary Siegel
Co-producer: Aaron Ferguson
Music: Glass Boy / Nomad1
Intro voice: Jenny Schaye
Image: edit: Troy Farah