Ben & Jerry's Cofounder Launches Nonprofit Cannabis Line (apnews.com) 93
The "Ben" in Ben & Jerry's "has gone from ice cream to cannabis with a social mission," reports the Chicago Tribune:
Ben Cohen has started Ben's Best Blnz, a nonprofit cannabis line with a stated mission of helping to right the wrongs of the war on drugs. The company says on its website that 80% of its profits will go to grants for Black cannabis entrepreneurs while the rest will be equally divided between the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance and the national Last Prisoner Project, which is working to free people incarcerated for cannabis offenses...
Ben's Best Blnz, or B3, says it licenses its formulas, packaging, trademarks, and marketing materials to for-profit businesses that pay a royalty. After expenses are deducted, the royalties are donated to the cause.
Ben's Best Blnz, or B3, says it licenses its formulas, packaging, trademarks, and marketing materials to for-profit businesses that pay a royalty. After expenses are deducted, the royalties are donated to the cause.
Re:So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I see what you're trying to say but arguably there's no drug that isn't readily available to anyone even slightly motivated to get it.
So the only difference is quality and legality. And that does have a major impact on a life.
Even if you could remove all drugs from the environment, coping mechanisms come in many forms. If drugs weren't available, people would find alternative ways to ruin their lives. Dopamine resistance fueled binges come in many different forms.
Re:So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
The current crop of racists sees themselves as saviors of the downtrodden.
Can you elaborate on this? It makes about as much sense as "go woke get broke".
Re:So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Liberals are the real racists according to these people. The reason Ben is focusing on helping Black people get into the Cannabis industry is that they have largely been forced out in a number of places, most of the industry in a majority of legalized states is the purview of rich white people. Local law enforcement selectively targets dispensaries run by POC, loans were withheld, licensing was withheld.
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Local law enforcement selectively targets dispensaries run by POC, ... licensing was withheld.
Citation?
loans were withheld
Growing or selling pot is a federal crime even if it is tolerated locally.
Nobody gets a loan for a cannabis business.
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As you said, it depends on your locality.
https://fundcanna.com/ [fundcanna.com]
https://www.fundera.com/busine... [fundera.com]
https://cannabusinessresources... [cannabusin...ources.com]
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
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Well... I could but honestly, how high do you rate the chance of it not being a waste of time what with your already conflating me with anti-wokes, already having discarded "go woke go broke" as idiocy (it sounds like) and then that signature of yours?
Kinda reads like you're very happy with your current opinion... so why should I waste my proverbial breath?
For everyone else who might ask your question without the same pre-made-up opinions:
As it is very sexist and denigrating to women to ask the men to make
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Who moderated this insightful?
First, it's NOT supporting cannabis USE. It's supporting black cannabis entrepreneurs, many of whom were previously incarcerated for cannabis-related offenses.
Blacks have been far more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for cannabis-related offenses than whites committing the same. This is an attempt to redress that imbalance.
Don't like it? Don't buy it.
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Blacks have been far more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for cannabis-related offenses than whites committing the same. This is an attempt to redress that imbalance.
It’s too bad that natives repeatedly get left off those redress attempts despite having worse outcomes statistically across the board including straight rounding up and mass execution by state authorities. Also there are other non white groups who deserve some redress as well, even if not as much is required to make things more “even”. It’s more beneficial when it’s solved for everyone at the same time, making for a larger coalition with more power rather than using groups
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tl;dr Whataboutism
Class solidarity is indistinguishable from whataboutism to mental invalids.
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Lol, if this was about class solidarity he would have said "poor people".
The first rule of class solidarity is don't divide the underclass by demographic trivialities, you idiot .
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What are these entrepreneurs doing if not selling the product for consumption aka USE? I mean are these entrepreneurs making hemp products or using this cannabis as packing materials? If not, then it is definitely supporting cannabis use despite what you want to tell yourself.
Re:So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Probably because black people are targeted for arrest at nearly 10x the rate as white people. https://graphics.aclu.org/mari... [aclu.org]
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Maybe it's because they commit more crimes...
Whites and blacks use marijuana at roughly equal rates.
Weekly marijuana use by race [brookings.edu]
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Probably because black people are targeted for arrest at nearly 10x the rate as white people. https://graphics.aclu.org/mari... [aclu.org]
Your own link says "3.6 times", not "10 times".
Also, 3.6 times the arrests doesn't necessarily mean "targeted".
People more likely to be arrested are those buying or using in public, or caught doing other crimes while carrying a joint in their pocket.
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Also, 3.6 times the arrests doesn't necessarily mean "targeted".
Beg to differ.
What? (Score:1)
So let me see if I'm understanding you correctly. I guarantee you're white.
So as a white person you are upset over another white person giving money to a group of black Cannabis entrepreneurs?
This is discrimination in your eyes?
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You have to discriminate to target a particular group. It's what the word fucking means.
Even an act as horrific as murder can be considered justifiable when it's done in self defense. Discriminating to tip the scales back towards balance is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
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Or just stop already with the tipping of the scale and let whoever is actually capable get his own money?
So to you what's fair is if a group is deliberately held back, they should be left in the back? That's bully behavior.
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That's a good question, and it's worth discussing, but I don't think we have to worry too much about that yet. We're barely getting started, we're nowhere near when does it end.
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Re:So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've met a lot of people who use cannabis products of multiple racial backgrounds. Seems rather racially-biased to only chose to support BLACK cannabis use.
The historical context you're missing is that the war on drugs was deliberately crafted to target black people. America was doing just fine thank you very well with taxing marijuana. Then Nixon set out to find a way to attack black people, and settled upon marijuana as his tool: https://harpers.org/archive/20... [harpers.org]
"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I'm saying? We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
And it continues to be used as a tool for targeting black people. Even though white and black have comparable marijuana usage rates in America, black people get arrested four times as frequently as white. https://www.latimes.com/opinio... [latimes.com]
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It's not clear that Nixon was racist - it was just a cold, calculated power-move - devoid of any kind of humanity.
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I don't disagree - I'd meant to emphasize that his actions could be explained by seeing a problem to be solved and a solution - robotically without regard for the consequences.
I discovered this lol (verbatim transcripts taken from Nixon's recordings - voiced by Montgomery Burns' voice actor from The Simpsons (lol)):
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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"You're not wrong that Nixon was a racist sleaze"
Biden was far more effective at getting minorities locked up for long periods than Nixon ever was
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Corn-pop was a bad dude....
Re: So cannabis is a black-only thing? (Score:1)
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"Justice is blind interviews, blind scholarships, and blind courts. We need equality. Take equity and shove it into the black depths of bias it came from"
You're NEVER going to have that without first having a push for equity
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Equal opportunity is the best we can give. Trying to "repair" the unrepairable (on iffy grounds and lots of assumptions to boot, mostly flawed), is actually going to set those poor oppressed downtrodden disadvantaged back more. Because it makes genuine achievement unbelievable and unappreciated, thus worthless. Worthless money to "repair" the downtrodden into worthlessness. That is "equity". Bad call, haruchai.
The only way to have "equal opportunity" is to rid our governmental systems (at all levels) of systemic biases against POC.
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93% of murders and 80% of robberies in New York City
70% of all violent crime in the State of California
And all three of them have some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Maybe making it constantly harder for law abiding citizens to buy firearms without breaking the law isn't the right way to reduce violent crime.
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Where was the good guy with a gun in this scenario? https://abcnews.go.com/US/5-de... [go.com]
Number of tyrants overthrown is still a big fat zero.
Second mass shooting in as many days. https://13wham.com/news/nation... [13wham.com]
Again, no good guys with guns showed up to save the day.
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>"Where was the good guy with a gun in this scenario? https://abcnews.go.com/US/5-de [go.com]..."
Picking single examples of "was no good guy there" is meaningless. It is especially useless in the most shot-up areas, which happen to be so-called "gun free" zones, because no good guy is ALLOWED to be armed there.
Legal defensive use of firearms stops up to 2.5 crimes every year; 92% of the time without a single shot fired.
http://www.gunfacts.info/gun-p... [gunfacts.info]
>"Number of tyrants overthrown is still a big fat zero."
T
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95% of murders in Chicago
93% of murders and 80% of robberies in New York City
70% of all violent crime in the State of California
And all three of them have some of the most restrictive gun control laws in the nation. Maybe making it constantly harder for law abiding citizens to buy firearms without breaking the law isn't the right way to reduce violent crime.
Specifically relating to Chicago: Estimates of how many fatal shootings in Chicago that are gang-related (based on CPD data) range as high as 70%. and Chicago's gang situation is somewhat different than other major cities: In the 80s, the FBI sent a gang task force into the City, and in cooperation with CPD, the very effectively cut the heads off the major gangs in the City. Sadly, it turned out that, not quite like the unifying message of the Cyrus character in The Warriors, Jeff Fort and the leaders of th
Re:Justice! (Score:5, Informative)
Redo your figures per capita and get back to us. Suddenly red states aren't looking so rosy.
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I live in a blue state, consider myself "purple" and don't own any guns.
But even I know that either you were misled, you didn't understand what you think you read/heard, or you are intentionally lying.
You are conflating gun deaths with gun homicide rates, they don't mean the same thing.
People are only really interested in the homicide rates, because that's what equates to being harmed by others (on purpose or accident). Most people are not concerned with if they are more likely to accidentally or purposely
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I live in a blue state, consider myself "purple" and don't own any guns.
But even I know that either you were misled, you didn't understand what you think you read/heard, or you are intentionally lying.
You are conflating gun deaths with gun homicide rates, they don't mean the same thing.
People are only really interested in the homicide rates, because that's what equates to being harmed by others (on purpose or accident). Most people are not concerned with if they are more likely to accidentally or purposely shoot themselves with a gun in one state/city vs another.
What a strange hill to die on.
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>>People are only really interested in the homicide rates, because that's what equates to being harmed by others (on purpose or accident)
>What a strange hill to die on."
No, not really. Suicides are 65% of all "gun deaths." Those are not against other people, so we don't have to fear those. Then you have to exclude gun deaths that are good- when a good person stops a bag person, civilian or police.
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I live in a blue state, consider myself "purple" and don't own any guns.
But even I know that either you were misled, you didn't understand what you think you read/heard, or you are intentionally lying.
You are conflating gun deaths with gun homicide rates, they don't mean the same thing.
People are only really interested in the homicide rates, because that's what equates to being harmed by others (on purpose or accident). Most people are not concerned with if they are more likely to accidentally or purposely shoot themselves with a gun in one state/city vs another.
Are you seriously suggesting that accidental gun deaths are somehow not a result of guns being available? That suggests to me that either you were misled, you didn't understand what you think you read/heard, or you are intentionally lying.
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Maybe we don't consider people accidentally dying a serious problem. Darwinism and all. If you shoot yourself or your buddy on accident, you might be a fucking idiot.
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If you kill yourself with a gun, you are harming the states income revenue! How dare you opt out! /s
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>"Redo your figures per capita and get back to us. Suddenly red states aren't looking so rosy."
What you also have to look at is the "color" of the cities you are talking about.
Re:Justice! (Score:4, Insightful)
Justice is giving every person an equal shot. Grew up poor? Grew up black? Grew up disadvantaged? Tough.
You contradicted yourself in consecutive sentences and still got modded +5.
I wonder if it was a coincidence that you're trying to deny black people the equal shot you claim to support.
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So needs-driven social security is fine, but private companies helping groups with known disadvantages is what got your back up?
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You face exactly the same interview process for a job.
If you come from a wealthy family, you have a significant advantage. Wealthy parents can (and typically do) throw their money at making sure their kids have all the best opportunities. When their offspring becomes adults, while they may be facing the same interviews, they'll be walking through the door much better equipped to make the kind of impression that lands the job.
Furthermore, discrimination certainly does make it difficult to get that "equal shot" you're claiming. As a gay man, I vividly remembe
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You guys share one thing in common. Black people will always be black, and you will always be an entitled arsehole.
I sincerely hope you choke on your silver spoon.
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Virtue signal much?
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They're doing it one step at a time. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/27... [npr.org]
Letting children work in meat packing plants and construction sites, what can possibly go wrong?
But I guess if you're old enough to work in the local mill you're old enough to get married. https://www.newsweek.com/misso... [newsweek.com]
Lot's of douchebags replying to this one.. (Score:2)
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Talk about feigned outrage. 99% of the posters here are white guys in their 50s. The fuck your feelings crowd is somehow upset that an old white hippie is giving some of his own money to an organization that promotes a black cannabis business? This somehow equates to racism?
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Lots of Libertarian douchebags, too (Score:1)
Talk about feigned outrage. 99% of the posters here are white guys in their 50s. The fuck your feelings crowd is somehow upset that an old white hippie is giving some of his own money to an organization that promotes a black cannabis business? This somehow equates to racism?
Ben and Jerry are not just "old white hippies", but the very type of phony-baloney Leftwing Libertarians of the 1960s, who pretended that the enterprises they started up were all about supporting social causes and propping up the disadvantaged when it was all about exploiting those causes and groups for financial gain. I'm the last thing from a white guy in his 50s and I see this gesture for the self-serving, condescending phoniness that it is. For instance: there has never, ever been a grassroots, concert
Sounds Good To Me (Score:3)
I have no problem with this at all. Kudos.
*55 year old white guy.
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If black people have it worse, it's harder for white people to have an excuse. This is why they can't accept it. Plus bog-standard racism.
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>"I have no problem with this at all. Kudos."
I just hope they focus on edibles.
So many places now smell really nasty from that stuff. Didn't even know what it smelled like until a few years ago. Then I thought we were being invaded by skunks until someone told me what it was.
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Smells better than car exhaust. Fix that one then we will talk.
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Not to me. In fact, few things I have smelled are worse. Dead animals does smell worse. Sewerage is worse as well. Car exhaust? Not even in the same league.
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Well, as they say, opinions, like assholes everyone has one and they all stink.. Well, except for that one guy, but he was born that way.
\o/ (Score:2)
Fuelling the purchase of even more Ben & Jerry's
Don't smoke 'em if you got 'em? (Score:2)
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I have no horse in this race, but I was surprised to recently learn that the CDC connects long-term mental problems, like schizophrenia, with cannabis use.
Of course there is a connection. The United States used to have an enormous mental health network across the country. By the 1950s, people were beginning to see drugs of all kinds (not just Thorazine, but even LSD) as miracle drugs that were going to cure mental illness so that by the 1960s, there were both Rightwing and Leftwing Libertarians demanding the closures of mental hospitals, resulting in deinstitutionalization.
From the Rightwing Libertarianism camp, the idea was that with psychiatric medication
Condescending, Libertarian, Self-Serving B.S. (Score:1)
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Don't Libertarians want all those drug-related crimes to not be crimes? There's nobody to lock up if what they're doing isn't a crime.
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Don't Libertarians want all those drug-related crimes to not be crimes? There's nobody to lock up if what they're doing isn't a crime.
Which Libertarians are you talking about? The ones who for the first fifty years of the counterculture didn't care about what happened to all the disadvantaged groups who got into drug dealing and only cared about the white stoners serving 15 years on a drug possession charge? Or the more recent strain, which started concern trolling about the plight of blacks getting locked up for dealing, so that blacks could be groomed into becoming their personal dealers now that pot has been decriminalized?