Amber Senter, Architect of Oakland’s Cannabis Equity Program, Says Founders Should Skip the Dispensary

Amber Senter co-founded Supernova Women, the organization that helped shape America’s first cannabis social equity program. A decade later, she says the licenses meant to repair the War on Drugs sent Black founders into the industry’s most expensive, lowest-margin, hardest-to-survive corner. “You need $2 million to open a dispensary. If you have $50,000, you can make a THC beverage.”

OAKLAND, Calif. — In 2015, as California’s cannabis industry prepared for full legalization, Amber Senter was driving across the state, opening accounts for an edibles company. Over six months, she helped expand distribution from three dispensaries to 50. The job required her to walk into more than 100 storefronts, pitch buyers, meet managers, and speak with owners.

The cannabis industry in California was booming, and as she got a pretty good sample of their protagonist, patterns began to emerge.

“There would be a lot of Black and brown people as security,” she recalled. “You’d see some Black and brown budtenders. But when I got to the buyer, none. When I got to the managers and owners, none.” 

Being a black woman herself, that experience clarified that legalization was becoming a formal market layered onto communities that had carried the risks of prohibition but were largely absent from ownership. That, as part of a broader change where commodification of commons was altering a longstanding caretaking economy into a more lucrative capitalist-hedonist one.

Nearly a decade later, Senter is one of the most visible architects of cannabis social equity policy, and her evaluation of what’s happened in the cannabis industry since is priceless. 

From Patient to Policy Advocate

Senter grew up in Chicago and later lived in Atlanta, where she began using cannabis to manage a painful autoimmune condition. The relief she experienced deepened into advocacy. By the late 2000s, she was active with Peachtree NORML and writing publicly about access and prohibition.

In February 2014, she moved to California seeking broader access to medical cannabis. At the time, the state’s loosely regulated system behind Proposition 215 produced thousands of dispensaries operating in a gray zone, and a culture of mutual support defined much of the patient experience. As Senter puts it:

“People would just give me products. Information was plentiful. People were willing to help.”

As California shifted toward comprehensive regulation, the ethos changed. Capital requirements rose, compliance costs mounted, and venture investment flowed in — at least in the golden years — as medicinal products lost shelf space to fancy adult-use ones. 

The Financial Barrier

While working at a company devoted to helping applicants obtain their medical cannabis license in Maryland, Senter encountered the economics of legalization up close.

Applicants faced a $60,000 state application fee. Consulting services to complete those applications often cost another $60,000. Prospective operators needed to demonstrate substantial liquidity — frequently at least $1 million — to prove operational capacity. 

Maryland’s population is roughly one-third Black. Yet the applicant pool Senter saw was overwhelmingly white.

Again, the racial and misogynistic bias in the entry thresholds became evident for her. 

Senter and fellow advocate Nina Parks (listed as one of High Times‘ 100 Most Influential People in Cannabis back then)  and Sunshine Lencho began discussing how those dynamics would play out in Oakland as California implemented adult-use legalization. And they then decided to do something about it. 

Building the First Social Equity Program

In early 2016, the trio co-founded Supernova Women, an organization focused on ensuring that Black and brown communities had meaningful access to the legal cannabis economy. They organized community meetings, testified at city council hearings, and worked directly with policymakers.

Their advocacy helped shape what became Oakland’s Social Equity Program, launched in 2017 and widely regarded as the first of its kind in the United States.

The program’s stated purpose was to provide individuals harmed by the War on Drugs with an opportunity to participate in the regulated cannabis industry.

But expectations were too high, and some people just didn’t see the point. 

You have to make a careful distinction between participation and repair.

“When we talk about social equity, people frame it as righting the wrongs done by the War on Drugs,” she said. “Oakland defines it as giving people harmed by the War on Drugs an opportunity to participate in legal cannabis.” 

In practice, that meant fee waivers, reduced taxes, zero-interest loans, technical assistance, and, eventually, grant funding.

Comprehensive reparations needed to actually right the wrongs of structural harm inflicted on communities over decades of hammering the state mallet were never on the list. That would include large-scale community reinvestment, housing restoration, or direct compensation for confiscated property, mental health issues, and family recomposition. Aspects that were never part of the municipal framework.

The gap between expectation and design has shaped much of the debate surrounding social equity nationwide.

Early Friction and Structural Adjustments

Oakland’s was the first social equity program in the history of the US. As such, it was a great breakthrough. As expected, mistakes were made.  

For instance, the initial approach required non-equity licensees to “incubate” equity applicants, effectively subsidizing their operational costs. The policy generated tension as private owners were responsible for helping social equity owners and assuming the costs of the public policy. 

That’s just such bad planning. 

Non-equity operators argued that the responsibility for repairing past harms rested with the state, not with individual businesses. Smaller operators said they lacked the financial capacity to participate. 

City officials revised the model. Oakland began funding shared manufacturing facilities and awarded grants for the acquisition of buildings. In 2020, Senter won a $250,000 grant to operate a pilot shared manufacturing kitchen. She later secured a $2 million grant to purchase and convert a former edibles production facility in East Oakland into a full-scale equity incubator.

That facility, now operated by the Oakland Equity Collective, continues to house equity manufacturers. The experiment demonstrates that municipal intervention can lower barriers in capital-intensive sectors such as production. It also highlights the limits of localized programs operating within a broader market defined by consolidation and competition.

Rethinking the Entry Point

Senter believes many equity programs have steered applicants toward the least advantageous segment of the supply chain: retail dispensaries.

Dispensaries carry heavy tax burdens, extensive compliance oversight, and significant staffing requirements. Industry analysts frequently describe retail as one of the lowest-margin segments in regulated markets. Senter recognized the opportunity and the constraints.

“You need $2 million to open a dispensary. If you have $50,000, you can make a THC beverage.” 

She now produces hemp-derived THC beverages using contract manufacturers, avoiding the capital expenditure of owning production facilities outright. If federal and state regulations continue allowing low-dose THC beverages to be sold in liquor stores and other retail outlets, she believes that segment could offer lower barriers to entry and broader distribution.

Equity programs, she argues, must continually reassess market conditions and guide participants toward viable opportunities rather than defaulting to retail licenses because they are familiar.