Can ‘cannabusiness’ turn deprived communities around?
Minorities have suffered disproportionately from the criminalisation of cannabis; now it’s a booming business, they should be its biggest beneficiaries
London — Having witnessed the fallout from drug and alcohol abuse in his struggling Maori community, Manu Caddie was always “quite anti-cannabis”. But now the youth worker-turned-entrepreneur believes the plant will bring prosperity to indigenous New Zealanders. A global upshot in cannabis legalisation has led to a “green rush” by investors into the fast-growing industry, worth some $12bn in 2018 — equal to The Bahamas’ annual economic output — data from Euromonitor International shows. A crop of social entrepreneurs also believe there is room for businesses to do good, as well as profit, from the plant. “Our community has a history of cannabis over-use, probably, and people relying on it, and it has caused all sort sorts of issues with prohibition and people going to jail,” Caddie told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from New Zealand. “The dream is that we could have some sort of ethical cannabis company that looks after the workers and looks after the environment,” said Ca...
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