CLEVELAND — This weekend, the IX Center will be the place for resources and education about Ohio’s medical marijuana and hemp industry.
In the midst of that, the Ohio Cannabis Health & Business Summit is also hoping to shed light on how to diversify the multi-billion dollar business.
At the two-day event, you’ll find legislators, cultivators, and distributors, but there’s another type of growth looming beyond the bud.
“You know, we are just kind of getting the education out there so people can assess it and judge it for themselves, versus it just being, well, hey, you know, the reef of madness,” says Lenny Barry, CEO of the Ohio Cannabis Health & Business Summit.
The cannabis industry is expected to surpass demands by roughly 40% by 2025 expanding the profits by billions, according to Forbes.
The projection has narrowed the scope to look at who is profiting from the growth.
A study by the Marijuana Business Daily found that 20% of cannabis owners and founders were minorities.
According to the study, 81% are white, 5.7% are Hispanic or Latino, 4.3% are Black and 2.4% are Asian.
The Ohio Board of Pharmacy approved 70 new dispensary licenses early this year and is reviewing more, adding to the 58 existing licenses.
Ariane Kirkpatrick, the Owner of Harvest of Ohio, is the only female woman of color licensed to grow, dispense, and process cannibals in the state.
She says the need to diversity and grow the industry is a task long overdue.
"I'm blessed, but we have to fight so that we could change the narrative so that we could change what people look like in this industry, not behind sales, but in front of the sales paving away,” Kirkpatrick said. “We want to build economic growth for communities, communities that are in jail because of this. That’s important.”
Medical marijuana is legal in Ohio. A vote to legalize recreational marijuana has been pushed back to 2023.
To view a list of Ohio medical marijuana dispensaries with certificates of operation, click here.
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