I've had the conversation countless times. An organization doing positive work in the community — a reentry program, a youth mentorship initiative, a family services group — expresses interest in a partnership with me. The need is real. The resources are there. 

And then someone asks where the money comes from, and everything changes.

Accepting a donation from a cannabis business can cost a nonprofit its IRS tax-exempt status. So the commitment disappears. The program goes unfunded. The families on the other end of that decision never know how close the support came.

I'm a cannabis business owner and community philanthropist. I sit on nonprofit and industry boards, showing up for this community directly — creating jobs, building relationships and doing the work. I built my business and my foundation because I believe cannabis operators have a responsibility to the neighborhoods they operate in. 

What I did not anticipate was that the law would make it impossible to act on that belief.

In December, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the rescheduling of marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act to Schedule III — the most significant shift in federal cannabis policy in more than 50 years. The order directed Attorney General Pam Bondi to complete the rulemaking process "in the most expeditious manner." 

What happened next was hardly expeditious. As of late March, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) was still pressing the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for a timeline. The DEA's administrative law judge retired. An appeal is stalled. There is no clear end date. Cannabis is still Schedule I.

When rescheduling eventually happens, cannabis operators will get relief from Internal Revenue Code Section 280E, the provision that forces cannabis businesses to pay up to five times the taxes that a conventional business does by blocking deductions for ordinary expenses such as rent, payroll and utilities that every other business takes for granted. According to one industry consultant, cannabis operators vastly overpaid federal taxes by more than $2 billion in 2025, which perhaps explains why only about a quarter of U.S. cannabis businesses manage to turn a profit.

It's not a coincidence. The financial system has been structurally designed to make survival difficult, particularly for community-based operators who do not have the legal resources of large multistate companies.

But even after 280E relief arrives, cannabis businesses will still not have a legal framework for philanthropic giving. 

A nonprofit in Nevada that accepts a check from my business may put its tax-exempt status on the line. Although there's no federal statute that specifically prohibits nonprofits from accepting cannabis donations, the prospect of running afoul of the IRS's Illegality Doctrine — a requirement that tax-exempt organizations avoid illegal activity — is enough for most nonprofit boards to say no. This means that a reentry program serving people with past cannabis convictions — people whose records exist because of the same criminalization that made this industry possible — still has to turn my money away. 

The federal government will collect taxes on cannabis revenue. It just will not let that same revenue reach the communities that need it most.

This is not an abstract policy concern. Black people make up only 1.2 percent to 1.7 percent of cannabis business owners, despite being arrested for cannabis offenses at nearly four times the rate of white Americans. (In Nevada, Black entrepreneurs account for 5.1 percent of cannabis business owners, but Black residents comprise 11 percent of the population.) The Congressional Black Caucus Foundation has noted that 280E creates a particular burden for minority entrepreneurs, who have less access to capital, and that taxes collected under the provision should be directed toward restorative programs that address the harms of "drug war" policies. 

That argument is right but it stops short of the full picture. We also need a system that allows the cannabis operators already embedded in these communities to invest directly in the organizations doing the work of repair.

Nevada has done more than most states to build a serious, thoughtful cannabis regulatory framework and I am proud to operate here. But the philanthropic giving gap exists here just as it does everywhere else. Nevada's cannabis industry generated more than $100 million in tax revenue last fiscal year. That money funds schools, infrastructure and public programs. The operators who generated it should be able to invest directly in their own communities — not be legally blocked from doing so while the state cashes the check.

It's ironic that some of the loudest voices against cannabis regulation reform come from the same conservative business community that champions deregulation and private enterprise in every other industry. Groups of House and Senate Republicans sent letters urging Trump not to reschedule marijuana at all. Alcohol companies sponsor community events. Pharmaceutical companies fund hospital wings and research institutions. Cannabis operators are told to wait.

The executive order opened a window. What policymakers do next — in Washington, D.C., and in Carson City — will determine whether legalization was ever really about community or just about commerce. We need state and federal policies that allow cannabis operators to make charitable contributions with the same protections available to every other industry. 

The organizations on the ground doing the actual work of community investment should not have to turn resources away. The people they serve have waited long enough.

Kema Ogden is a Nevada-based cannabis entrepreneur, philanthropist and community advocate. She is the founder of Top Notch THC and co-founder of The Ogden Family Foundation.