OAKLAND, Calif. - In 2015, as California's cannabis industry prepared for full legalization, Amber Senter was driving across the state, opening accounts for an edibles company. Over six months, she helped expand distribution from three dispensaries to 50. The job required her to walk into more than 100 storefronts, pitch buyers, meet managers, and speak with owners.
The cannabis industry in California was booming, and as she got a pretty good sample of their protagonist, patterns began to emerge.
"There would be a lot of Black and brown people as security," she recalled. "You'd see some Black and brown budtenders. But when I got to the buyer, none. When I got to the managers and owners, none."
Being a black woman herself, that experience clarified that legalization was becoming a formal market layered onto communities that had carried the risks of prohibition but were largely absent from ownership. That, as part of a broader change where commodification of commons was altering a longstanding caretaking economy into a more lucrative capitalist-hedonist one.
Nearly a decade later, Senter is one of the most visible architects of cannabis social equity policy, and her evaluation of what's happened in the cannabis industry since is priceless.
From Patient to Policy Advocate
Senter grew up in Chicago and later lived in Atlanta, where she began using cannabis to manage a painful autoimmune condition. The relief she experienced deepened into advocacy. By the late 2000s, she was active with Peachtree NORML and writing publicly about access and prohibition.
In February 2014, she moved to California seeking broader access to medical cannabis. At the time, the state's loosely regulated system behind Proposition 215 produced thousands of dispensaries operating in a gray zone, and a culture of mutual support defined much of the patient experience. As Senter puts it:
"People would just give me products. Information was plentiful. People were willing to help."
As California shifted toward comprehensive regulation, the ethos changed. Capital requirements rose, compliance costs mounted, and venture investment flowed in - at least in the golden years - as medicinal products lost shelf space to fancy adult-use ones.
The Financial Barrier
While working at a company devoted to helping applicants obtain their medical cannabis license in Maryland, Senter encountered the economics of legalization up close.
Applicants faced a $60,000 state application fee. Consulting services to complete those applications often cost another $60,000. Prospective operators needed to demonstrate substantial liquidity - frequently at least $1 million - to prove operational capacity.
Maryland's population is roughly one-third Black. Yet the applicant pool Senter saw was overwhelmingly white.
