Part 1: Introduction
States have increasingly applied social equity goals within their marijuana legalization programs. This effort began at the municipal level, but Massachusetts created a statewide social equity plan within its framework for legal marijuana in 2018, and ensuing states— including Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and Vermont—have iterated with alternative approaches to addressing social equity.
Nominally, social equity programs are designed to bring about restorative justice for what are viewed as arbitrary and discriminatory arrests, convictions and incarceration of Americans during the War on Drugs.
However, current approaches to social justice employed by all these states fail
