Cannabis Convictions Still Haunt Black Families. This Nonprofit Offers a Lifeline.

Sitting in a Virginia state prison cell, Bryan Reid would often slouch his shoulders, droop his chin, and pout his bottom lip — the posture of someone struggling to believe how his life had come to this.

Before he was transferred in 2018 to Coffeewood Correctional Center in Mitchells, he was a proud father of four and an avid cannabis grower. The very plant that brought him solace had torn him away from his three daughters and infant son for six years.

“I was depressed about it,” he recalled over the phone from his home in Martinsburg, West Virginia. He was released last year after serving time for a possession with intent to distribute.

In 2018, Reid said, he would make trips from his Virginia home to Oregon to tend to his perennial plants. That ended when he was arrested in Virginia — unaware that the state’s marijuana laws stood in sharp contrast to those out west. Oregon legalized recreational marijuana in 2014 and was the first state in the country to decriminalize it back in 1973 — decades ahead of much of the country.

Before and after a judge found him guilty following a non-jury trial, Reid said he shared dormitories, and holding cells, with men accused, or convicted of heinous crimes such as murder, rape, and child molestation.

“And I was in there for a plant,” Reid said, scoffing. “For a marijuana felony.”

In the criminal justice system, there’s no shortage of organizations doing policy and advocacy work in the cannabis industry. But what’s often missing is direct, tangible financial support — the kind of support that actually keeps food on the table, phone accounts funded, and children in school while a parent is behind bars, said Mary Bailey, executive director of The Last Prisoner Project.

Two years into his sentence, Reid took a leap of faith from 2,300 miles away in a prison cell, and emailed a horticulture program that focuses on cannabis cultivation at a university in Oakland, California. In shock, he received a response and was forwarded to Bailey. 

Those emails changed his life, he said. 

Since 2019, The Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit organization, has been dedicated to changing marijuana laws, and utilizing its grant programs to support current and formerly incarcerated people strictly with cannabis convictions. The grant programs, financed through donations from legal cannabis businesses, are also extended to financially support the family of an incarcerated person, who was more than likely their breadwinner prior to sentencing. 

“When we first started the org[anization], we basically did a big needs analysis,” Bailey told Capital B about the three grant programs. “We talked to people who were in prison, we talked to their family members, and figured out, what do people need?”

Helping lives impacted by cannabis charges

After connecting with Bailey and receiving financial support, Reid said he felt a renewed sense of purpose. Though still incarcerated, he felt symbolically present in his children’s lives — helping cover school costs and affording holiday gifts for the first time in years.

Reid’s daughters each received $5,000 grants to go toward books, supplies, technological equipment, or other needs for each year they were enrolled in college. Every three months, $300 was automatically added to Reid’s commissary account to purchase everyday essentials such as socks and shoes that are sold in prisons at higher costs. The grants also provide pro bono legal support such as clemency applications to have their cannabis-conviction pardoned, or their sentence reduced to get out of prison sooner. 

He said the application process was surprisingly quick to fill out and to get approved. That quick turnaround was something Brittany “Britt” White certainly appreciated when she received an opportunity of a lifetime to advance her education. 

After spending five years in an Alabama prison for a 2009 felony marijuana trafficking conviction, White attended in April 2022 The National Cannabis Festival in Washington, D.C. There, she met Stephanie Shepard, a director of advocacy for the Last Prisoner Project. Shepard informed White about their grant programs. 

Months prior, White was elated to tell her mom and dad that she was awarded a fellowship to Harvard Law School’s Institute to End Mass Incarceration. Her parents, she said, were “deeply hurt” and “embarrassed” when she went to prison. This news was something to make them proud. But, she had no way to afford relocating from Dallas and sustaining the cost of living in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

She took Shepard’s advice and filled out an application. For White, the Last Prisoner Project’s application process stood out from other grant applications for its simplicity — no legal jargon, no endless questions — just a few minutes, and she was done.

As cannabis reform grows, justice lags behind

The Biden administration began the process of changing how the federal government legally views marijuana — moving it from the strictest drug category, reserved for substances like heroin, to a lower category where it’s treated more like steroids. But with President Donald Trump signaling a potential rollback, advocates worry that halting the review could stall progress, revive outdated drug war policies, and reopen the prison pipeline — particularly for Black and brown communities.

To White, who is currently on probation for 15 years following her imprisonment, the push to stop the Drug Enforcement Agency’s review process appears to be driven more by business interests than by concerns for people like her.

“Who benefits from marijuana being illegal?” White, 39, asked. 

She challenges the continued criminalization of marijuana federally, and in more than a dozen states, pointing to the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on drug policy and the systemic stigma that still surrounds cannabis to even get a job. A University of Georgia study from 2018 found that whenever a state legalized medical marijuana, prescriptions filled for opioids were reduced by millions of daily doses per year.

Now principal for the Shelley and Felton White Institute, a social justice resources organization, White emphasized personal accountability while incarcerated, which included work release at Burger King where she earned pennies on the dollar. But, she also called for empathy and dignity for those with marijuana-only convictions.

For decades, marijuana laws have disproportionately targeted Black Americans, often leading to longer sentences for even minor offenses, and leaving lasting consequences that make rebuilding life after prison even harder. 

“I have shown since I’ve been home, that I have the character to rebuild my life,” she said. “I just want people to honor that.”

For White, to get her felony marijuana conviction pardoned, she’d have to file a clemency appeal to Republican Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey. She has a career record of granting one clemency application since being elected in 2017. She commuted the sentence for a Black man on death row to life in prison. Ivey will be term-limited in 2027.

White said she’ll try her chances with the next governor.

Today, 31 states and Washington, D.C., have followed with similar reforms as Oregon, while 19 states, including Alabama, still treat marijuana possession as a criminal offense, despite its growing recognition as a medicinal drug. 

Three years into Reid’s sentence, in 2021, Virginia passed legislation legalizing the cultivation of four marijuana plants for personal use and possessing up to a pound. The news was bittersweet, since the bill did not include retroactively resentencing cannabis-only convictions for people like Reid.  

“By working with the Last Prisoner Project and helping disburse grants to folks, who are really in need, definitely gives some solace to people who are in prison, as well as support to their family members on the outside who really do need and deserve support,” Bailey said. 

Since Reid’s release in February 2024 — with probation lasting until 2029 — his sights are set on returning to his Oregon farm, and eventually attending university. But for now, he holds tight to a deeper appreciation: helping his daughters through college and watching them graduate, first in December, then again in May.

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