This Not-For-Profit Organization In Missouri Is Helping Minorities Enter The Cannabis Industry

We love to see states becoming more progressive through new bills, programs, or other initiatives. Things are starting to look brighter for Saint Louis, Missouri, a city that’s finally implementing some change around state government and its programs. 

Last year, the city of Saint Louis elected its first Black woman (Tishaura Jones) as mayor, and that move was pretty monumental. But, thanks to Executive Director of Exit-Now, Marne Madison, something else is launching Saint Louis forward on its path to progressiveness. 

Madison’s Exit-Now is a not-for-profit organization that advocates for minorities to help them find education and training to have the proper tools to enter the cannabis industry.

There’s still an evident gap between minorities and the cannabis workspace, and that explains why Exit-Now has decided to partner with licensed cannabis vendors and education programs nationwide to help remove that gap and help minorities participate and profit from the blossoming industry. 

Madison opened up in a press release regarding Exit-Now’s recent partnership initiatives, saying that the war on drugs has “led to mass incarcerations in minority communities for nonviolent offenses,” but it’s also jumpstarted a new and legal industry that is “often out of reach for these same communities.”

The organization’s mission is to change how these communities most impacted are suffering while huge corporations are profiting on a crop that once threw 40,000 Americans in prison. In order to make that change, Exit-Now is teaming up with Saint Louis University and the school’s Cannabis Science and Operations program.

Between SLU and the Cannabis Science and Operations program, Exit-Now has created the Equity-Now scholarship to help that mission come to life and enhance diversity within the cannabis industry. Additionally, the partners also launched the Round-Up Equity program, which would donate all proceeds to the Equity-Now scholarship fund.

The Round-Up Equity program will roll out at various dispensaries, and the first was Swade Dispensaries in Missouri, one of the only five in the state. The program works by allowing consumers to round up their purchases on products at the dispensary, and all proceeds collected from the initiative will then fund the SLU Equity-Now scholarship. 

Madison added in the press release that when dispensaries implement the round-up program and allow their consumers to choose to round up their purchases, “patients and consumers are assisting in paying the tuition for a student to enroll and successfully complete all semesters of SLU’s Cannabis Science and Operations Certificate.”