Launching March 31, the new national coalition says Latino communities have spent years shaping cannabis reform while being sidelined in the rooms where policy, capital and power move. Its leaders say the mission is bigger than visibility: build organized influence at the intersection of cannabis, immigration and drug policy.
The Latino Cannabis Alliance is launching with a line that tells you pretty quickly what kind of organization it wants to be.
“We are not asking for a seat at the table,” treasurer Ruth Jazmin Aguiar told High Times. “We are building one, rooted in equity, economic power, and political influence.”
That is a stronger opening move than the usual nonprofit rollout language, and probably a more honest one too. Because what the alliance is arguing is not just that Latino communities deserve more visibility in cannabis. It is that they have already done the work, already helped carry reform, already shaped the culture and the politics of this movement, and are still too often treated as secondary when decisions about capital, policy and access get made. The organization officially launches March 31 as a national coalition of U.S.-based Latino cannabis advocacy leaders, with Jessica F. González as president, Jason Ortiz as vice president and Aguiar as treasurer, joined by JM Balbuena, Maritza Perez Medina, Ishaq Ali and Gaby Collantes on the founding leadership team.
But the more interesting part is not the org chart. It is the diagnosis.
In an interview with High Times, the alliance said it grew out of “a simple but powerful realization”: Latino voices have long been central to the lived reality of cannabis policy, but too often get folded into broader narratives that miss the cultural context, political realities and specific needs of Latino communities.
The alliance pointed to a specific moment that made waiting feel impossible: the immigration raids on California cannabis cultivation sites last July. “This incident was such a clear and urgent intersection of cannabis policy and immigration that we knew waiting was no longer an option,” the group told High Times. “We needed a home, a space where Latino professionals, advocates, and community members could show up fully, be seen clearly, respond to crises effectively, and lead with depth, credibility, and cultural fluency.”
That is really the heart of the story. The LCA is not launching just to say Latinos belong in cannabis. It is launching to argue that cannabis has never been only about cannabis. For Latino communities, they said, it also runs through immigration, criminal justice, language access and economic opportunity, often all at once.
“A single arrest can trigger deportation,” the alliance said in the interview. “A language barrier can shut out the very communities most harmed by prohibition from accessing the economic opportunities created by legalization.”
Also read: Cannabis Can Cost You Your Visa: Immigration Risks for Non-Citizens in the United States
That framing gives the organization a sharper lane than generic diversity talk. It is not just asking to be included in an existing conversation. It is saying the conversation itself has been too narrow from the start.
Across the interview, the alliance kept returning to the same point: Latino leaders have been doing real work across cannabis, criminal justice, immigration and drug policy for years, but without “a centralized, credible home that connects it all.” What the group wants to build instead is something more coordinated and more durable. In practice, it says that means lobbying at the state and federal level, coalition sign-on letters, cross-state working groups, activist roundtables, media placements with coordinated messaging and exchanges with advocates in Latin America. “The goal is to move from individual efforts to collective influence,” the alliance said, “to ensure that Latino voices are not just present where these decisions are being made, but that we are a foundational voice in shaping outcomes.”
That last word matters: foundational.
A lot of cannabis organizations talk about representation as if it were a branding exercise. The Latino Cannabis Alliance is trying to push it back into policy. One of the strongest parts of the interview comes when the group talks about barriers Latino leaders still face. Yes, there is underrepresentation. Yes, there is exclusion from power. But the alliance also pointed to something less discussed and more structural: data.
“One of the most urgent and under-discussed issues is data,” the group told High Times, noting that for years federal crime data did not meaningfully disaggregate Latino communities in cannabis arrests. “We know the war on drugs hit our communities hard. We lived it. But without the data to document it, those claims are too easily dismissed in policy rooms that use a lack of data as an excuse before they act.”
That is a smart point, and not one enough people make. If the harm is not measured clearly, then the demand for repair gets easier to ignore.
The same goes for immigration. In another striking answer, the alliance argued that as long as federal prohibition creates immigration risks, full participation in the cannabis industry will remain out of reach for too many in Latino communities. “The industry benefits tremendously from Latino consumers and workers while staying silent on the policies that make participation dangerous,” the alliance said. “That is a contradiction we should all be willing to name out loud.”
That may be where the LCA becomes most relevant beyond launch week. Plenty of groups can put out statements. Fewer are willing to say plainly that cannabis reform cannot keep talking about equity in the abstract while dodging immigration, language access and the uneven way prohibition has landed across Latino communities with different histories, statuses and national backgrounds.
The group also seems intent on being judged by what it does, not just what it says. In the interview, the alliance previewed an April 28 webinar focused on how the cannabis community can support immigrant communities, a congressional action page urging support for the MORE Act, and a May lobby day designed to bring advocates directly into rooms with lawmakers. It also said success in year one would not just mean policy wins, but building infrastructure: documenting Latino stories in cannabis, lifting up overlooked accomplishments and creating a robust directory of Latino cannabis professionals so people stop doing meaningful work in isolation. “Connection is infrastructure,” the alliance said. “Right now, too many people are doing incredible work alone without knowing who else is in their corner ready to support them.”
That may be the clearest expression of what they are trying to build. Not a one-day launch. Not a symbolic advisory circle. Infrastructure.
None of this guarantees impact, obviously. New organizations launch all the time, and cannabis is not exactly short on coalitions, boards and bold declarations. The harder part is staying coherent, building trust and proving that the work can move beyond launch-day energy.
Still, the Latino Cannabis Alliance is entering the space with a sharper thesis than most. It is not asking to be politely acknowledged after the real decisions have already been made. It is saying Latino communities have always been part of the story, and that the next phase of cannabis reform needs to reflect that reality in policy rooms, research, organizing, media and capital alike.
Or as the alliance put it to High Times, the goal is to make sure Latino voices are “impossible to ignore.”
Readers can learn more at latinocannabisalliance.org and follow the group on Instagram at @latinocannalliance.
