Give social-equity owners a better shot at pot licensing

There was much to-do and fanfare about the recreational marijuana bill when it was signed into law in Illinois, because there seemed to be a good-faith effort to make marijuana dispensary licenses more accessible to minorities.

For one naïve moment, I truly thought minorities like me had a real shot at a license. I was mistaken. Not only were true minority-owned companies passed up in the first round of licensing, but the hoped-for legislative fix in the lame duck session of the 101st General Assembly never materialized.

The law set up a licensing process in which 75 licenses would be awarded in the first round of the process. There were more than 1,600 applicants for these 75 licenses. We learned that there were 250 perfect scores, and the major common denominators were the organizations that got these scores were white, male, wealthy, well-connected insiders. One applicant had 25 perfect scores, which makes one wonder, because in other states perfect scores are rare.

Apparently, the only way to achieve a perfect score was to have a veteran with 51 percent ownership, even though the section with the veteran information is in a part of the application marked as "optional." Other sections of the application were considered required.

One has to wonder how many of the veterans involved in these groups are true 51 percent owners or are they being used simply to achieve a perfect score?

Here I am, an African American, living in an impoverished area, but I can't meet the qualifications as a social-equity applicant without being a veteran with 51 percent ownership?

I hate to be a pessimist, but there is virtually nothing that's going to change in this first round and all the big wealthy corporations and groups are going to get exactly everything they want. The only difference is that now the process will have the appearance of fairness because supposedly social-equity candidates have been given a second chance.

The reality is that, yes, social-equity candidates are able to reapply, but this is nothing more than the appearance of doing something without actually doing anything. In fact, it is rather condescending and, quite frankly, insulting.

I respect our veterans, and in fact our group did have a veteran who is a physician. But our veteran owns 10 percent not 51 percent. We also have two Hispanic females in our group. We still have an application in for a cultivation craft license, but based on what happened in the dispensary license process, the outcome in the craft licensing process will be no different, because the veteran ownership requirement applies to craft licenses as well.

If the governor were truly serious about giving us a second chance, then why not allow groups like ours that did have a veteran in the ownership group to reconfigure the ownership percentage in our group? If we can't change the ownership percentage, then the second chance in the first round is a moot point.

I've done almost everything right in my life. I grew up as a poor child in southern Illinois and beat the odds of racial discrimination and segregation. I earned a full basketball scholarship through Marquette University. I was fortunate enough to attend the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. And I even finished my medical training at Harvard University Boston Children's Hospital.

I never had a perfect score. I didn't have a 4.0 grade point average. I didn't have a perfect MCAT score, but I was given a fair shot to succeed from those academic institutions.

So I say to our governor and those who set up this first round of cannabis license, I think it's obvious that with all good intentions, you did not receive a perfect score either.

The first round is history and there's not much that's going to change the outcome, but where we go from here is the question. When the dust settles from the disastrous first round, I hope social-equity applicants like me have an opportunity to weigh in and help forge more equitable rules for subsequent rounds.

There will be future licenses issued, and we need to examine what happened in the first round and adjust the rules to make sure it does not happen again. There should be an opportunity for people like me and other applicants of color to suggest ways to improve the process at a public hearing. There should be subsequent legislation to fix this glaring problem.

Nothing happened in the last legislative session to address these concerns, but it must be a priority in the current legislative session. We must dispense with the patronizing and work together to turn what was clearly good intentions into reality.

• Dr. R. Lawrence Hatchett, M.D., is a urology specialist in Marion.