As more states continue to legalize, the legal cannabis industry is projected to net $80 billion dollars in annual sales by 2030, according to a short film slated to begin airing tonight on PBS. However, there's a disturbing dichotomy that belies this rosy estimate. Thanks to outdated laws, 40,000 people are currently languishing in prison for non-violent cannabis offenses.
Entitled "Spotlight On: Last Prisoner Project," the four-minute video highlights the injustice of cannabis prosecution. Notably featured in this specific film is the work of The Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit focused on cannabis criminal justice reform. Presented by The Beehouse Justice Initiative, a New York City organization dedicated to healing “some of the harms caused by disparate enforcement of cannabis prohibition" and video production company Matador Content, the film is narrated by Chris Rock and directed by Ezra Paek.
Showcasing the damaging effects of marijuana prohibition, the film introduces to viewers the case of Stephanie Shepard, an African-American woman, who was charged in 2009 with a non-violent cannabis offense.
"I didn't think that this plant in this day and age could get somebody like me with no criminal history, prison time," she said, recalling her subsequent trial and punishment. "When the judge said 120 months, it didn't even compute into my head."
Even after her lawyer told her that she was being sent to jail for 10 years, Shepard, who had worked at a "large real estate firm" in New York City prior to her arrest, was in a state of shock. "I just remember my sister screaming," she added.
Since her release from jail, Shepard has been working with the Last Prisoner Project to get her life back on track. As she recounted in the film, her once promising career trajectory included a stint working for the NBA. "Now I'm trying to get a job at Starbucks and I'm nervous," she admitted. " I feel like I'm labelled. I feel like I'm judged."
According to Beehouse, more than half of all drug arrests in the U.S. are for cannabis possession and despite roughly equal usage rates, people of color are almost four times more likely than white people to be arrested for cannabis. Cannabis arrests can preclude getting or keeping a job, landing a scholarship, living in public housing and the ability to successfully reacclimate back into mainstream society.
"Marijuana prohibition has never really been about public order and public safety," said Natalie Papillion, director of strategic initiatives at Last Prisoner Project. "It's always been wielded as a tool of social control and social control of certain populations."
Noting how this country's treatment of people who use cannabis has been "terribly—and selectively—destructive," Gregory Heyman, managing partner at Beehouse, is hoping this short film and others like it will ultimately "help America grow into a place where no person is incarcerated for possession of cannabis."
"Spotlight On: The Last Prisoner Project" is the first of six short films that will focus on cannabis and incarceration.
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July 09, 2021 at 06:57PM
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Short PBS Film Series Highlights Injustice Of Cannabis Prosecution - Forbes
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