Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen has launched a cannabis brand called Ben’s Best Blnz, or B3, and profits from the company will be used for social purposes. The company’s official mission is to “sell good weed and use the power of business to right the wrongs of the war on drugs.”
“The idea [de la marque] came to me on a camping trip with a friend, sitting around a fire and smoking a joint. And we thought, “It would be nice to have weed like the good old days,” Ben Cohen told reporter Abigail Glasgow.
Ben’s Best Pre-Rolls
And behind the desire to find the effects of yesteryear, Ben Cohen obviously opted for a very social approach for his brand. B3 has thus been registered as a non-profit organization and 80% of the company’s profits will be entrusted to the NuProject association and donated in the form of grants to black entrepreneurs in the cannabis sector. An additional 10% will go to the Last Prisoner Project and 10% will be paid to the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance.
For Ben Cohen, this latest initiative aims to address the huge gap in wealth between generations, caused by the systemic oppression of black people in the United States. “The average black family owns 1/10th the wealth of a white family,” he explains. “I feel that owning a business is one of the best ways to access generational wealth. »
The brand will offer low-THC products, including pre-rolls and vape pens.
The Ben’s Best vape pen
The packaging of the various products features quotes from abolitionist Angela Davis and former South African President Nelson Mandela. The branded packaging was designed by Dana Robinson, whose series Ebony Reprinted recontextualizes advertisements from the 1950s and 1960s. Robinson has created a new piece for the brand, recontextualizing an old magazine ad that serves as a motif for packaging and communication visuals.
The work of Dana Robinson
“Schedule 1 started the war on drugs,” Cohen says of Nixon’s racist campaign that disproportionately targeted black people and is at the root of today’s problem with the incarceration of mass. Historically, black people have been arrested four times more often than white people for using cannabis.
“Schedule 1 is supposed to be reserved for drugs that have no medical value and pose a high risk of addiction,” adds Cohen, “which doesn’t apply to weed, but beer. “.
With a mission to “sell good weed and use the power of business to right the wrongs of the war on drugs”, B3’s products are sure to become one of the tools for decarceration, the erasure of criminal records and the rehabilitation of convicted persons.
