Interview with Kobie Evans, co-owner of Pure Oasis, Boston’s first black owned dispensary

Economic empowerment, NetFlix Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, and a recent break-in robbery of Pure Oasis

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BY MIKE CRAWFORD

Along with his business partner Kevin Hart, Kobie Evans owns Pure Oasis. It’s the first black-owned cannabis dispensary in the City of Boston, and if that’s not a big enough accomplishment, the pair recently had a star turn on an episode of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj on Netflix. Naturally, they spoke about what cannabis equity looks like nationally and in Massachusetts. I recently had Evans on my podcast, The Young Jurks, and we touched that issue and others, plus discussed the recent break-in and robbery of Pure Oasis and other dispensaries. 

Where do we start, the Netflix show, after Governor Charlie Baker allows you to re-open and now you got looted? 

2020 has been a very interesting year, it's interesting all these global and national things happened and now we end up in the crosshairs of everything. 

Like most people, we were watching the news on Sunday night and seeing all the protests and went to bed feeling pretty good the protests were happening across town and Pure Oasis was safe because we are what 3 to 5 miles away from where everything is happening, we just felt like we didn't have much to worry about. Then you get a call in the middle of the night, there’s been an intrusion, it’s disheartening on a couple of different levels but more so within the shadow of George Floyd losing his life and people protesting peacefully, there were a number of individuals who wanted to take advantage of that for personal gain. All across the city different businesses were looted, damaged it was kind of a gut punch. 

Luckily there wasn’t much damage and we were able to open that same day, we weren’t sure about opening but as we were out there, cleaning the glass, assessing the damage, every other person, every other car stopped and asked about us, they were concerned, they were very vocal about the fact that this wasn’t neighborhood people because neighborhood people support Pure Oasis, we made the decision to open that day because we felt like we needed to be there for the community and if we close they win and that’s not what we wanted, we wanted to be “Boston Strong”, to represent the strength of our community, and the resolve of our community, we’ve come this far and this isn't going to stop us or slow us down. 

Organized grand larceny?

It seemed like it was a concerted effort, it seemed like it was more of a game, it definitely seemed like it was very coordinated, at 2 o’clock in the morning on a Sunday night, during a pandemic when everything is closed, I don't think it was a sheer coincidence that all these people just happened to be out and about.

Your facebook post, noted that you “were grateful, and overwhelmed from the outpouring of support from all over the country” and that “So many people have asked how they can help” you directed them to “Haley House http://haleyhouse.org/ Thank you!”

Why Haley House?

We’ll be ok but there are other organizations as you have an economic downturn, they lose a lot of their funding sources.

Haley House helps a lot of people who are marginalized, they help people when they are released from jail and they need a job and career training. Haley House is important. I want to celebrate those organizations like Haley House that make a difference to everyone and that’s what they do.

You are the first black owned dispensary to open in Boston, also the first recreational dispensary to open in Boston, a lot of firsts in your story.

That wasn’t our plan but that’s how it worked out, with that comes a greater responsibility and we want to uphold that. 

What I hope that happened to us doesn’t mar the peaceful protestors who are trying to be vocal and prove a point, we want to disconnect the two as much as possible albeit it happened during the time of the protest in no way do we see it as a direct connection between the two.

One is playing off the other the people who hit our store we’re taking advantage that Boston Police Department was over extended dealing with all the protestors in one part of the city and they used that to their advantage in another part of the city.

Netflix, Patriot Act show?

I was happy with the way the Netflix show came out because he didn’t make us look like idiots, Sometimes you are filming stuff and you cross your fingers you hope that they will portray you in a positive light, overall I was happy, I was shocked and surprised how thorough and in depth they were with their investigative journalism, they definitely put a comedic spin on it but they do tend to hit the nail on the head, for somebody who is outside the realm they did a good job at peeling back the layers, digging deep into the core of what a lot of people have been losing their mind over is this relationships between some of the companies, the political aspects and some of the inner workings of this machine that is rolling across the country and having a direct influence on who gets a license and who doesn’t. 

The show labeled it a legal cannabis cartel, do you think there is a cannabis cartel in Massachusetts?

That’s an interesting question, I think what the producers of the show were looking at was the nation as a whole and when you look at the nation, Boston is a subset and our rules and regulations with the Cannabis Control Commission that will break up a cartel, I think that’s the intent of it but different states don’t have that kind of teeth in the rules and regulations, so when you look at Florida and they use that as a good example, when you have an entire state that is controlled by a small handful of organizations and the rules and regulations are only written to benefit them, then it may be appropriate. When you look at a state like Pennsylvania, Louisiana, when you see different states with the same players dividing up the pie equally among themselves there’s a word that can be used for it, it’s very organized…

What’s holding the Massachusetts cannabis industry back?

I still feeling like we are stymied by the whole community host agreement process I still feel like that is a big barrier to any deliberate success when you look at the numbers overall of whose getting licenses and who’s sitting on the sidelines paying rent, there isn’t a lot of equity in the numbers when it comes to host agreements. I think Massachusetts will end up being a cautionary tale, in terms of how you can do it but other states will learn to do it better. 

Without that host community agreement, I’m keeping my eye on NY, NJ, CT to kind of figure out how they formulate a good plan, Illinois built a framework based on Massachusetts and improved on it, I think it’s an evolving plan and I hope NY, CT, NJ do better than even what IL did and I think the intent was there for a good plan (in Massachusetts) but that host community agreement undermined progress that was much needed. 

Would a state law mandating equity on a local city/town level help? 

Absolutely, it’s this weird paradox where you have the state mandate for the CCC but that process was dependent on the local municipality who had no mandate or they decided that they didn’t have a mandate, so the sum of the total has to equal each part, if each part doesn’t have the same mandate, the net sum is always going to be zero because everybody isn’t playing be the same rules and that’s what we are seeing. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, I don’t know if Massachusetts, despite the best intentions of the CCC, I think we are going to have a very hard time getting an A+ rating on the rollout of what voters voted for. 

You had mentioned Illinois has an equity fund for applicants, Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz has introduced SB 2650 that would create a no interest social equity loan fund, would it help to have that passed?

There are a lot of barriers that can be fixed with having the right people on your team and the right people are usual consultants that cost some cash, so I think it would be helpful to have something more deliberate built into the rules, regulations, and laws such as having access to capital, such as having a designated number of licenses and host community agreements that go to economic and social equity applicants. All these things come together to create a system that is fair, equitable and that creates parity. So anything and everything helps but money is really at the root of who is going to get passed, go. 

What would you like to see happen in Massachusetts?

We need more equity, we need a better representation of the cross sections, the people that live in this state as owners, we need more economic empowerment, we need more to stem the curb the economic disenfranchisement that is happening and this is a great vehicle because it’s directly related to the war on drugs, it empowers people who have negatively impacted. These things are important and they are close, I’ve talked to so many people who have an application with the CCC but they’re waiting for a host community agreement, it’s something we can do immediately. More equity creates a balanced group of people that can lend different backgrounds, different perspectives, there are some great people out there dying to get into this industry. They need to get in. 

Boston’s equity program?

My hope is Boston becomes a game changer, I hope that Boston looks at it from a lens that it helps out for many people who missed out in other places, in Brockton, Amesbury, and wherever else, I’m optimistic and hopeful. One of the deliberate steps in Boston is to take it out of the hands of one person and hopefully give it to a group of people that will look at it with a number of different factors and not just on who your attorney is and who you gave political donations to. 

A few local dispensaries were tied to a bill that would create an illicit cannabis task force with the State Police and tax agencies, how do you approach the street competition issue and how do you think other dispensary interests and regulators, politicians and police should approach it? 

We live in an interesting economy where a lot of our clients don't have the kind of income that will allow for a regular purchase of cannabis coupled with the fact that a lot of our clients need cannabis for health reasons, depression, anxiety, whatever else that helps them cope, these seem clients have had to rely on the illicit market forever because that was the only option they had. It’s difficult as an owner to be in a community where the community has a hard time affording the cannabis we are there to sell. So it creates this issue there aren’t a lot of options we can offer in the price range that is going to be affordable for the community and so the community ends up going to the illicit market. Until we can get to a point where our prices can come down and it’s more affordable and more competitive people have no choice, it’s a recreational drug but it’s also a necessity for a lot of people. PTSD just doesn’t happen to people that go to war. If you’ve been overpoliced you potentially have PTSD. Abusive family there a lot of things lead to PTSD and cannabis is one of those therapies people tend to use. So you can’t mandate purchases at dispensaries so there has to be another option. What you don’t want to do is have a situation where people are over-policed again or that somebody loses their life over it. 

Support a state law that would mandate lower costs for low income customers/patients?

This is about being creative, there are enough intelligent people out there to solve this problem easily and I think it’s solvable problem, it’s just about having the determination and desire to address it, that’s where we need people in the room, like Commissioner (Shaleen) Title, thank god for her, because she is somebody that is very deliberate about creating solutions for these problems in a way that is a lot of lateral thinking that is bringing a lot of people into consideration, we would be a lot better if we had more people like Commissioner Title in the rooms where we talk about equity because most people don't understand the importance of it, diversity in commissioners, diversity in politicians we need more of that in the state and in the nation and when we have that, what comes out of those conversations, will change things dramatically.