Kris Krane

Yesterday a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services released one of the most consequential announcements ever made at the federal level concerning cannabis prohibition. The agency formally recommended that cannabis be moved from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, a classification for drugs that have a high potential for abuse and no recognized medicinal value, to the much less restrictive Schedule III.

Sean Berte and Armani White are the poster children for cannabis social equity businesses. Boston natives both, the duo set out to use the well intentioned social equity regulations to obtain a license and open a store in their hometown. White, 50% owner of their planned Firehouse dispensary in Boston’s Hyde Park Neighborhood, is a local African American community organizer in Roxbury, one of Boston’s only remaining majority Black neighborhoods in a rapidly gentrifying city.