00:00You know what? Yeah, I was smoking when I was 16.
00:04And then let me tell you what happened after that.
00:06I went on to be the first person to graduate from college in my family.
00:09I smoked weed and I went to Harvard.
00:10I went on to be a United States Naval Officer.
00:12I smoked weed and I have an MBA.
00:14I went on to be a corporate executive in Fortune 100 companies.
00:17I smoked weed and I used to work on Wall Street.
00:19I went on to be the first black woman to own a dispensary and edible company at a growth facility
00:22in Colorado.
00:23I smoked weed and I worked for a cannabis startup.
00:26That's what a pothead does.
00:30I got it.
00:57Yo, this is an industry that's really happening and women
01:00have a chance to be a part of it.
01:03Estro Hayes is a media company focused on bringing the business and lifestyles of women
01:09in cannabis to the masses, particularly women of color.
01:15I literally drove from Sugar Land, Texas, into Colorado, got into the industry.
01:22We are a minority-focused business development and management company.
01:27The most common misconception from outside is that we're all stoners.
01:32What we're trying to do is create a really welcoming retail experience as opposed to intimidating
01:37and scary and illegal.
01:43I hate to break it to everybody, but this is a business.
01:48I come into the office, I meet with my staff, I meet with my marketing director, I meet with
01:53my controller.
01:54At the end of the day, if you don't understand HR issues, if you don't understand hiring and
01:58firing, if you don't understand basic accounting, if you don't understand basic marketing, then
02:03you're not going to survive in this business.
02:08Cannabis has all kinds of hurdles that you have to get over.
02:11It's not federally legal, we know that.
02:13I mean, when we started, there wasn't even a category within Colorado to go down to the
02:19city to say, I'm applying for a medical marijuana license.
02:22And then to top it all off, you're a woman of color.
02:25You're a woman and then a woman of color.
02:27Now that it is legalized, whether medicinal or recreational, why is it important for us
02:33to have a position in this industry as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as employees, and
02:39or as investors?
02:40It's very important because this industry was built on our backs.
02:43My job is to make sure that that door is not opened, but that door is kicked the fuck
02:49down so that more people can come through it.
02:54Historically, cannabis was something that overwhelmingly penalized people of color, and especially men
02:58of color.
02:59And now as the industry starts to legalize, the ones who are benefiting are, you know,
03:03white men.
03:04And so it's an interesting subject being a woman of color in this industry.
03:09The race thing in this industry is real.
03:12The social justice aspect of it, we can't lose sight of that.
03:15I began to learn more about how and why it became illegal.
03:20And I got really pissed off because I thought it was this drug.
03:24And so I believe that all people of color, especially African Americans and Latinos, I mean, we've
03:31experienced travesty, devastation due to the failed war on drugs.
03:39America's public enemy number one in the United States is drug abuse.
03:44It's turning our cities into battle zones.
03:47You will be caught, and when you're caught, you will be prosecuted, and once you're convicted,
03:54you will do time.
03:56There's now an understanding that the war on drugs was an abject failure.
04:04We've spent over a trillion dollars on a failed war on drugs that concentrates on prohibition
04:09and punishment.
04:14Forbes reports on a remark by a former Nixon aide hinting that the war on drugs had a hidden
04:20purpose, that President Nixon saw the drug crackdown as a way to arrest blacks and anti-war
04:25protesters.
04:40I realize a lot of my sisters and brothers aren't able to be out here because they're
04:45incarcerated, and we know that the war on drugs has been a war on us.
04:49It's really fucked up that it's people still in jail, people that look like us, and people
04:54that are out here selling.
04:55That is not right, and we will fight every day until that is not happening.
05:00My brother was actually the first person that I had ever met that had been arrested for cannabis.
05:05He grew up in South Dallas.
05:06I grew up here in Colorado.
05:08When I went to school at the University of Colorado, CUPD would walk by, see me and three
05:13of my white girlfriends on the steps rolling, be like, hey, put it away, put it away.
05:16You're like, all right, we put it away, cops go, we bring it back out and start rolling
05:20again.
05:21I've got to say, I've never had a fear of being arrested for cannabis because in my
05:25very, very non-black world, nobody got arrested.
05:31When my brother told me he had a felony and just got out of prison, my heart sank, my stomach
05:36tightened up because I thought the next words out of my brother's mouth were going to be
05:39he raped somebody, he killed somebody, he did something really horrible.
05:43When he said four ounces of weed, I didn't believe him.
05:47Because who goes to jail for four ounces of weed?
05:50I became convinced after a period of time that marijuana was not a safety risk.
05:55And I also think the way marijuana cases historically have been handed ultimately has not been fair.
06:01And I'll give you some of the data that suggests that.
06:03In 2017, about 86% of the individuals who were arrested with marijuana, either possession
06:10or smoking were men and women of color. In Manhattan for every one white person who was arrested for
06:15possessing or smoking marijuana, 15 men and women of color were arrested. Now we know that
06:20white men and women use and smoke marijuana the same as men and women of color. So there's really no
06:26difference in how they use it. But the enforcement was much harder on communities of color.
06:32They came after black and brown boys because A, they had no ability to defend themselves. They had no
06:38ability to have money to have a lawyer. And this became our mass incarceration, our slave labor class.
06:50So this is where we make sure that all of the joints are actually a gram.
06:56Why do we do this? Right now it's not about money. You know, we have not turned a profit yet
07:01in cannabis
07:02because we are selling a schedule one illegal drug. For us, it's social justice.
07:07How can we have more representation of women and minorities in the industry and not just
07:11representation, but leadership and not just leadership, but community.
07:16We need to stop the culture of competition amongst women because when men and especially white men own
07:2377% of political power, 89% of CEO power, 98% of wealth, we need to have a spirit
07:31of,
07:31yeah, girl, let's do this. And in the cannabis industry, I mean,
07:35it's the fastest growing industry in America. Not one of them, but the fastest growing industry
07:39in America. When I became an entrepreneur, young black women were not the number one
07:44business starters in America. Today we are. This industry allows us to leave a legacy.
07:51It's about being focused. It's about aligning with the right people. It's about not giving up. And once
07:55you understand that and understand what your purpose is, you become unstoppable.
08:00You
