Vic Mensa: How to keep cannabis culture alive in the boardroom

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Tradition doesn’t come quietly.

It brings rhythm, reminiscence, and reality. It carries the voices of people that turned nothing into one thing lengthy earlier than buyers and policymakers noticed the worth in what tradition constructed.

In hashish, that tradition was born from basements, backyards, block events and studios lengthy earlier than legalization, earlier than inventory markets and earlier than branding – earlier than the plant grew to become a revenue line.

In Chicago, the place I’m from, hashish and music are intertwined. They weren’t developments – they had been language. In hip hop, the hashish plant represents peace, focus and inspiration. It slows the chaos of a metropolis shifting too quick.

We rapped about it, painted it, and handed it round as an emblem of unity. For us, hashish was by no means only a product. As an alternative, it was ritual, artwork and therapeutic.

The irony is that the identical tradition that celebrated the plant was criminalized for it.

I discovered that early.

The excessive worth of genuine hashish tradition

A pricey buddy who mentored me – somebody who believed in my voice earlier than I did – was murdered over a bag of weed. I used to be simply a youngster, and that loss carved one thing everlasting into me.

It confirmed how a system may flip one thing pure and good right into a weapon towards its personal folks. That second taught me firsthand what occurs when tradition is punished as an alternative of protected.

Each hip hop and hashish had been born from wrestle. They gave us instruments to specific ache, rejoice pleasure and construct worlds that didn’t exist for us elsewhere.

Years later, the world realized there was cash to be made in what we created. Instantly, the identical plant that broke households aside was being traded on inventory markets and mentioned in boardrooms.

That shift compelled a query: if you stroll into these boardrooms, who’s sitting on the desk, and who’s lacking?

How hashish tradition survives within the company boardroom

For me, possession isn’t simply enterprise, it’s steadiness. It means ensuring the individuals who constructed this tradition have the possibility to profit from it, to steer it, and to guard it.

Our neighborhood doesn’t want saviors, it wants seats. It wants the voices that outlined this motion to form the place it’s headed.

Hashish has all the time had a soundtrack. Jazz, reggae, jam bands, hip hop, all saved the spirit alive when the regulation tried to silence it. However hip hop gave hashish its loudest, most international voice.

It turned an emblem of riot into one in all creativity and resilience. After we mentioned, “that is a part of who we’re,” we had been rewriting stigma in actual time. That power carried the trade ahead.

Now, as legalization expands, I really feel the accountability to hold that authenticity with it.

Tradition isn’t static. It evolves. What begins as resistance turns into rhythm; rhythm turns into affect; affect turns into management. The query is: what will we do with that energy?

The hashish trade should strike a steadiness between tradition and revenue

The reply needs to be greater than revenue. If we cease at possession and overlook neighborhood, we’ve missed the purpose. The identical streets that impressed the music and the motion deserve funding and alternative in return.

As hashish strikes deeper into the mainstream, I need to see extra founders who appear like the communities that carried it. Extra partnerships that honor historical past. Extra boardrooms that make house for truth-tellers, creatives, and changemakers who perceive this plant is larger than product classes or quarterly progress.

It’s about therapeutic, and never simply our our bodies, however our histories.

Each model, each artist, each entrepreneur standing on this floor owes one thing to the individuals who got here earlier than us, those who made it secure to dream out loud and paid a worth so we may stand within the mild.

When tradition enters the boardroom, it brings accountability. It brings tales that cash can’t purchase.

My hope is that because the hashish trade continues to develop, we keep in mind its roots, the music, the artwork, the wrestle, the enjoyment. As a result of that’s the actual capital. That’s the muse we’re standing on.

Constructing an equitable hashish trade

We are able to’t change the previous, however we will honor it. We are able to construct in another way. We are able to be sure that the way forward for hashish doesn’t erase the tradition that made it attainable.

The folks, the neighborhoods, the motion, that’s the place it began, and that’s the place it has to return.

As a result of on the finish of the day, tradition constructed hashish, and it’s on all of us to verify it thrives with integrity.

Vic Mensa, an artist, musician and philanthropist, is the founding father of the Illinois-based 93 Boyz hashish firm.