Marijuana Legalization in Canada and Michigan

**Jimaz** · May-08-23, 07:16 PM

If Ben Cohen isn't more careful he might start giving business a good reputation.

From Pints to Joints:
Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder’s New Cannabis Company

Ben Cohen just launched a weed brand with a high-minded purpose—giving away 100% of its profits to right some of the racial injustices from America’s War on Drugs. Ice cream sold separately.

One summer night in 1970, years before Ben Cohen teamed up with Jerry Greenfield to launch one of America’s most successful ice cream companies, he was smoking a joint with some friends under a lifeguard tower at Jones Beach on Long Island, New York.

Cohen saw the lights of a police car driving towards them and told a friend to get rid of the roach. At that time, marijuana was just as illegal in New York as heroin. And a small doobie could land you in jail.

“‘Ronnie, eat the jay!’” Cohen, now 72, remembers telling his friend. “The cops get out and they're searching around with their flashlight and sure enough Ronnie didn't eat it—they found the jay and arrested us.”

At the stationhouse, the two recent high school graduates were strip searched, and things weren’t looking good for a couple of longhaired dopers. “Eventually, as we were white middle-class guys, we ended up getting tickets for littering a lighted cigarette butt on the beach,” says Cohen, in his home office just outside Burlington, Vermont.

The run-in could have changed the course of Cohen’s life—and those of chubby hubbies everywhere. Instead of going to jail, he went to college, dropped out, drove a taxi in New York City, tried his hand at pottery before starting Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream in 1978 with his childhood friend, Jerry, out of an abandoned gas station in Burlington. By 2000, after Ben & Jerry’s was acquired by Unilever for $326 million [[around $580 million in current dollars), Cohen pocketed about $40 million, the equivalent of $70 million today.

But all these decades later, Cohen still can’t shake the feeling that if he had been Black, that night in 1970 would have ended very differently. He has good reason to believe that the color of his skin gave him a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free Card: Black people are nearly four times as likely to get arrested for marijuana possession than white people, despite similar usage rates, according to a report by the ACLU....

**Jimaz** · July-05-23, 08:22 AM

Today WWJ is reporting that Pontiac will allow a limited number of retail recreational marijuana consumption establishments.

The license application process is just beginning and will take a while to develop but it's inevitable.

**canuck** · July-06-23, 08:01 AM

Originally Posted by Jimaz

If Ben Cohen isn't more careful he might start giving business a good reputation.

From Pints to Joints:
Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder’s New Cannabis Company

Looks like he never heard of White Boy Rick and how badly treated he was. He stood out like a sore thumb, like an Eminem in a jar of chocolates.

**Richard** · July-06-23, 08:51 AM

Yea he was traumatized by a thought created in his mind over something that may have happened to him had he been born another skin color.

I think they call that paranoid delusional. Or something like that.

Its like anything else in the legal system,if you do not have a lawyer or the means to hire one,the odds of low income being in the system are going to be higher,back in the day I saw just as many white folk who lived in a majority white city go to jail over a roach or small amount and even had their vehicles confiscated.

In Florida if you are arrested and spend more then 24 hours in jail the city or county is reimbursed by the federal government,so there is incentive to incarcerate.

But times have changed,as a majority they do not care about small amounts of weed,but if you are doing something else that is illegal they will tack the charge on.

We just went through that with the city council ,they could not figure out why predominately African American neighborhoods had a higher arrest rate of African Americans then whites.

They act like if you go to jail there will be 500 African Americans and one white guy when it is not the case.