“In California, every day is now 4/20,” Trevor Noah announced to his audience on The Daily Show Tuesday night. Indeed, recreational use of marijuana is now legal in California, making this a pretty relaxing start to the year for some West Coast dwellers . . . despite, well, everything else. There is, however, still one problem: as Noah noted, plenty of people have served time for nonviolent marijuana offenses in that state that would now be legal—and many of them have at least one thing in common.
“I’ll tell you who I do feel bad for,” Noah said Tuesday night. “All the O.G. black and Latino weed entrepreneurs. Think about it: they set up the weed business, they created the market—and right now, they’re watching all these white guys get rich while they’re doing time for being ahead of their time.”
It’s been a repeated point of conversation and contention as a growing number of states move to legalize marijuana for recreational use: there’s a proven disparity in how law enforcement has approached drug possession. In short, white possessors tend to get arrested at far lower rates than people of color caught doing precisely the same thing. Now, as more and more states make marijuana use legal, Noah proposes that there’s at least one way to make amends:
“I say, every person who has served time for nonviolent weed offenses should automatically get a license to sell weed,” Noah said. “That’s what I believe. You don’t even need to give them a certificate. You can just frame their rap sheet. It works.”
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Westworld (Season 2)
HBO is once again hoping you’ll ignore the big Game of Thrones-shaped hole in its schedule and turn your attention back to the sci-fi mind game that is Westworld. The Emmy-nominated series, starring Evan Rachel Wood and Thandie Newton, is ready to confound you once again in its second season. Until its spring 2018 premiere, take a trip back in time and revisit nine burning questions we still have about the finale.Photo: By John P. Johnson/HBO.
Grown-ish
Yara Shahidi takes the lead in this youthful Black-ish spin-off set to air on Freeform starting Jan. 3, 2018. In this series, Zoey is finally off to college, stumbling through cringeworthy rites of passage like embarrassing herself at a frat party and hiding secrets from her parents.Photo: By Eric Liebowitz/Freeform.
’Tis the season to watch a bunch of perfect human specimens fight for tiny gold medallions. This year’s Winter Olympics will kick off on Feb. 9, 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.Photo: By Julian Finney/Getty Images.
The Chi
After breaking out on Master of None and winning a historic Emmy for one of this year’s best TV episodes, Lena Waithe is ready to claim her spot in the prestige-TV realm. Enter The Chi, her Showtime series about young people coming of age in Chicago, set to premiere on Jan. 7.Photo: By Matt Dinerstein/SHOWTIME.
A Wrinkle in Time
The classic Madeleine L’Engle tale is finally coming to the big screen on March 9, 2018, thanks to Disney and director Ava DuVernay. The sci-fi story about a girl tesseracting her way through time to find her missing father will star newcomer Storm Reid alongside stars like Oprah Winfrey,Mindy Kaling,Reese Witherspoon, and Chris Pine.Photo: By Atsushi Nishijima/Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
Solo: A Star Wars Story
After some catastrophic ups and downs, Han Solo’s origin story will finally be revealed to us on May 25, 2018. The Star Wars spin-off stars Alden Ehrenreich as the galactic smuggler and also features Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian and Emilia Clarke playing a mysterious character named Kira.Photo: From Lucasfilm Ltd./Everett Collection.PreviousNext
Laura BradleyLaura Bradley is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com. She was formerly an editorial assistant at Slate and lives in Brooklyn.