Inside The Boston Battle To Change Mass. Marijuana Industry's Corporate, White Image

ORANGE, MA - FEBRUARY 14: Seun Adedeji, the CEO of Elev8 Cannabis, answers questions from an audience member after a presentation in Orange, MA on Feb. 14, 2019. The 25-year-old opened his first dispensary in Oregon and likened himself to a franchisee of Sea Hunter Thearapeutics, which gave him a $1 million loan to open a store in Athol. The company, which is seeking to be a major player in the Massachusetts market, tapped former Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson, who is also seeking to open a marijuana shop in Boston's Mattapan Square, in 2018 to become the chief executive of Verdant Medical, one of its affiliated companies here. The business of selling legalized pot to the public is finally getting underway in Boston, and, viewed at street level, the market is unfolding very little as the state had intended. Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to make social justice goals a cornerstone of marijuana legalization. But two years in, those equity provisions are giving way to old inequities, small players are being squeezed by the bigger national ones, and the question of which minority entrepreneur most deserves the neighborhoods trust is proving to be hard to discern, a Boston Globe Spotlight Team review showed. (Photo by Nathan Klima for The Boston Globe via Getty Images)