For Rastafarians like Richard Chung, a leather craftsman with a bundle of salt-and-pepper dreadlocks, marijuana has long been both sacred and a livelihood.
Those dual uses made Rastafarians instrumental in building New York’s illegal cannabis market, and made them frequent targets of the police. Mr. Chung, now 70 and known by his spiritual name, Ras Opio, was arrested several times over the decades that he sold weed. On one occasion, he said, officers cut off one of his dreadlocks and hung it at the station house like a trophy.
New York legalized recreational cannabis use in 2021, seeking to turn the illicit trade into a legitimate industry benefiting those who had been harmed by enforcement of drug laws. But while the law sought to give people like Mr. Chung an opportunity to profit from their difficult experiences with the police, it did not make accommodations for those whose faith was intertwined with that history.
Now, as the legal market approaches $1 billion in sales, there is an emerging push for the state to recognize cannabis’s sacramental use so that members of ritualistic cultures like Rastafarianism can grow and sell it in accordance with their beliefs. Places like Jamaica, where Rastafarianism originated in the 1930s, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have taken such steps.
The effort is led by Rastafarians who want sacramental use defined in the law, licenses to cultivate and dispense cannabis set aside specifically for religious communities, and other changes that allow them to sell and consume cannabis during ceremonies.
“We started the trade,” Mr. Chung said. “At least they could give us some part of it,” he added.
Rastafarians involved in cannabis activism say that few have received licenses to grow or sell products in New York, though hard numbers are elusive. The state cannabis agency does not track the religious affiliation of the business owners to whom it awards licenses. (Rastafarians are a small minority in New York; census data does not indicate exactly how many live in the state.)
As the state moved to open up the legal market, Floyd Jarvis, a Rastafarian from Canarsie in Brooklyn, was hired as the director of the cannabis work force and business development program at Borough of Manhattan Community College. He began recruiting Rastafarians who had been dealers to apply for business licenses. Scheril Murray Powell, a cannabis lawyer and Rastafarian advocate, helped them prepare applications as she met with state regulators to discuss how to address their religious and financial needs.
Ms. Murray Powell said policymakers should change regulations to allow houses of worship to cultivate cannabis for their members and for sale to licensed dispensaries, she said. A similar provision already exists for Christian bookstores that sell communion kits with sacramental wine, she noted.
The change would also require making an exception to the current law’s requirement that retailers and consumption venues be at least 200 feet from a house of worship, she said.
Much of the weed currently sold in New York’s dispensaries is unsuitable for Rastafarians because it is crossbred, seedless and contains additives like chemical fertilizers, she explained. Cannabis can be consecrated only if it is organic, she said.
“As religious practitioners, we’re forced to be illicit because they have not made an accommodation for Rastafari and for the fact that we need to own the entire chain of custody” from seed to sale to ensure the cannabis is sufficiently pure, she said.
Vanessa Cheeks, a spokeswoman for the state cannabis agency, said regulators were researching how to support houses of worship interested in cannabis. She added that setting aside licenses for them would require the Legislature and the governor to change the cannabis law.
Conrad Haye, 56, a former Rastafarian who co-owns Smoking Scholars, a dispensary in the Bronx, said that instead of waiting for the state’s help, Rastafarians could partner with people who might not share their culture but who already have licenses.
“You’ve got to get your foot in the space, and then start making decisions about what changes you want to make,” he said.
Rastafarianism grew out of earlier religious movements in Jamaica that appropriated biblical Scripture to challenge slavery and colonialism. Its name comes from Ras Tafari Makonnen, who was crowned emperor of Ethiopia in 1930 and renamed Haile Selassie I. He became a symbol of a proud and independent Africa, and practicing Rastafarians worship him as a messianic figure.
Vivaldi Jean-Marie, a philosophy professor at Columbia University, said that as descendants of Africans, Black Jamaicans already had strong traditions involving herbs when cannabis was brought to the island by indentured servants from India. Subsequently, British authorities criminalized cannabis to target anticolonial groups including Rastafarians, he added.
Rastafarians use cannabis in prayer and meditation, consuming it by smoking dried flower in spliffs or in water pipes. They also use it to make teas and stews.
The anniversary of Emperor Selassie’s coronation on Nov. 2 draws believers to celebrations that sometimes last days. This year, one such gathering was held in the evening by a denomination known as the Moral Theocracy Order of the Brooklyn Nyabinghi, in an event hall in Crown Heights.
A black-and-white portrait of the emperor hung on a shrine at the center of the room topped with flags of the Ethiopian empire. Rastafarian Bibles sat open with dried cannabis flower spread on their pages.
Norman Willock, 62, known as Ras Irhone Binghi, chopped some flower on top of a drum and stuffed it into a makeshift water pipe as he waited for more people to arrive.
They came with their dreadlocks wrapped in scarves or covered with knit caps that only the men removed for prayer. The ceremony, with drumming and singing, continued until the next morning. The gathering takes place in a legal gray area: Although the legalization law allows consumption at indoor venues, no licenses have been issued yet. But organizers say the police don’t bother them.
Rastafarians attending the gathering expressed a variety of feelings about expanding legalization to recognize their faith practices.
Reni Adebayo, 26, a progressive political strategist, said the government’s recognition of sacramental use could help dispel stereotypes of Rastafarians as shiftless, which she said has made it hard for them to get jobs and secure housing.
“It creates barriers to just being treated with a certain level of respect,” she said.
Charlene Herbin, wearing a white dress and a red head scarf, said she had been forced to walk away from jobs that required her to take drug tests.
She said that legalization had given Rastafarians greater freedom to practice their faith. But without assistance, many Rastafarians who want to start cannabis businesses can’t afford licensing fees and start-up costs.
“All of these things cost money that we don’t have because for years, due to the fact that we used the sacrament, we weren’t allowed to get jobs, certain places didn’t want you to get apartments, certain people even tried to take away your children,” she said. “I experienced all of it.”
Jeremiah Haywood wore a blue suit with trimming in the characteristic Rastafarian colors of red, green, gold and black. Ethiopian crosses were sewn on his pant legs.
Addressing the small crowd, he bristled at a bitter irony: While many Rastafarians remain sidelined, some cannabis companies use their image to market products like flower strains, rolling papers and vape pens. He scoffed at the quality, calling it “bamboo.”
“When the great prophet Robert Nesta Marley said they gone get tired of seeing my face,” he said, paraphrasing a reggae song by Bob Marley and the Wailers, “I didn’t know it would be on the pack of this bamboo.”
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