This paper analyzes the economic, legal, and social aspects of the legal cannabis industry in the United States. These analyses include the history, current status, and future of all three components, all with an emphasis on reforming the existing systems in place in order to achieve the most beneficial cannabis industry possible. Many reformative legal implications are made, stressing the importance of decriminalizing cannabis, releasing nonviolent and cannabis-related criminals from prison, and expunging their criminal records. The paper places a heavy emphasis on the importance of designing the legal system to be fair and equal across all racial and ethnic groups, given that people of color have been hit the hardest in terms of cannabis-related issues. Economic components such as tax design and access to proper financial institutions are also included, as well as the social implications that have both gone into and are a product of the long-standing war on drugs. While there is no comprehensive solution for how to fix every aspect of the industry, this paper highlights key aspects to be aware of in the design stages of potential federal legalization.
The threat of global climate change to the world’s water resources has jeopardized access to clean drinking water across the world and continues to devastate biodiversity and natural life globally. South Africa operates as a useful case study to understand and analyze the effectiveness of public policy responses to the perils of climate change on issues of water access and ecosystem preservation. After the new South African Constitution was enacted in 1997, protecting water resources and ensuring their equitable distribution across the nation’s population was a paramount goal of the young democratic government. The National Water Act was passed in 1998, nationalizing the country’s water infrastructure and putting in place programs seeking to ensure equitable distributive and environmental outcomes. Thus far, it has failed. Access to South Africa’s water resources is as stratified as access to its economy; its aquatic ecosystems remain in grave danger; and many of the same problems of South Africa’s Apartheid era still plague its efforts to create an equitable water system. Decision-making power continues to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, at the expense of historically marginalized groups, whose voices are still not adequately heard. Corporate actors still exert undue influence over legislative policy that favors economic growth over environmental sustainability. The looming threat of climate change is exponentially increasing the chances of disasters like Cape Town’s 2018 feared ‘Day Zero’. The National Water Act’s noble intentions were never actualized, and therefore the people of South Africa remain in serious danger of acute and chronic threats to their water supply.
Chandler Unified School District (CUSD), a large school system in Arizona that serves 45,000 students from preschool through high school, has been unable to escape similar structural and frictional inequities within its schools. One instance of a racially charged student performance at Santan Middle School motivated CUSD to take a more immediate look at equity in the district. It is during this response that our team of New Venture Group consultants engaged with Matt Strom, Assistant Superintendent of CUSD, in analyzing the important question of “how CUSD can take steps towards closing equity gaps within the district?”
CUSD defines an equity gap as any difference in student opportunity, achievement, discipline, attendance, etc. contributable to a student’s ethnicity, gender, or socioeconomic status. Currently, certain student populations in CUSD perform vastly different academically and receive different opportunities within schools, but as was our problem statement, CUSD is aiming to reduce (and eventually close) these gaps.
Our team approached this problem in three phases: (1) diagnosis, (2) solution creation, and (3) prevention. In phase one, we created a dashboard to help principals easily and visually identify gaps by toggling parameters on the dashboard. Phase two focused on the generation of recommendations for closing gaps. To achieve this goal, a knowledge of successful gap-closing strategies will be paired with the dashboard. In our final phase, the team of consultants created a principal scorecard to ensure equity remains a priority for principals.