Afro-Latina Led Cannabis Company Wins Maryland Cultivation and Processing License

Though consideration is showered on retail operations, cannabis cultivation and processing type the essential foundation of the emerging lawful market.  Regular Wellness Maryland, a MBE/DBE/CBE business, designed heritage on Friday, April 1, 2022 when it grew to become the very first cannabis enterprise with a Black and Latino the greater part operator to win a cultivation license in the state of Maryland. Christina Betancourt Johnson, CEO of Conventional Wellness Maryland (SWM) is also the 1st Afro-Latina to operate a accredited cultivation firm in the United States. 

The historic licensure of Regular Wellness Maryland is the culmination of a tough-fought fight in a limited license point out. In reaction to calls of bias and inequity in the software approach and a lengthy enchantment, the Maryland Medical Cannabis Fee a short while ago granted a handful of minority-owned organizations cultivation and processing licenses.  Regular Wellness Maryland is a single of its most recent license holders. 

Typical Wellness Maryland

“I’m grateful for the guidance we have acquired during this approach,” claimed Regular Wellness Maryland CEO Christina Betancourt Johnson. “From legislators to fellow business owners in the cannabis room, we were inspired and supported in this enterprise. Observing other folks of colour successfully operating cannabis corporations, was inspirational and motivational. It’s been a worthwhile journey and I’m excited for the effects that Typical Wellness Maryland will have on our point out and communities most harmed by prohibition”

Johnson qualified prospects the Normal Wellness Maryland management team, comprised of DMV natives who comprehend the special demands of nearby communities. SWM is centered all around its values of group engagement, collective wellness, and wealth-developing for the generations of people harmed by the nation’s cannabis prohibition and the war on medicine. SWM seeks to be at the forefront community training and financial empowerment to make sure that the harms of the previous are rectified. 

SWM strongly thinks that well being should be a source of fortitude and wellness with no judgment. Around the several years, a stigma all-around cannabis and its end users has grow to be cemented in culture. It has grow to be connected with deviance and criminality, particularly for Black and Brown folks who are arrested at 4 occasions the price of their white counterparts nationally.

Black and Latina Owned Cannabis Firms

“What’s genuinely essential in our neighborhood is that we destigmatize cannabis, not just for restorative justice, and not just for the reason that of the many years of in excess of-policing in our communities”, says Johnson. “But, also for the reason that cannabis, at its main, is a wellness product. And if we aren’t properly, our communities won’t be possibly.”

As a single of the country’s only Black and Latina entrepreneurs of a certified cannabis company, Johnson recognizes her obligation to be a neighborhood resource. SWM endeavors to elevate and increase the DMV current market by producing cleanse, quality cannabis products that positively effect people’s lives. Johnson also owns Rooted Therapeutics, a D.C.-based mostly cannabis businesses in search of a healthcare facility license in the metropolis. Equally corporations will provide educational courses, philanthropic investments, and workforce improvement chances in the DMV location.