LOS ANGELES — The very thing that had once torn Ingrid Archie from her daughters and led to her incarceration now made her bubble with unbridled optimism.
It was early 2019, a year after recreational pot sales began in California under Proposition 64, and politicians and activists were proclaiming that Archie and others who grew up in communities disproportionately criminalized by the "war on drugs" could now profit off the legal cannabis industry as entrepreneurs.
Buoyed by that promise — "social equity," as it became known — Archie, then in her late-30s, began the process of applying for a retail cannabis license. Years earlier, she'd been convicted of possessing pot for sale. Now, she dreamed of opening a holistic community center in South L.A. that would sell edibles, hold homeownership seminars and provide mental health services. Finally, she thought, a pathway to generational wealth for many in her community.
