Ben & Jerry’s Co-Founder Starts Cannabis Nonprofit

Ben Cohen, the Ben in Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, is now also the Ben in Ben’s Best Blnz (or B3), a new nonprofit business selling cannabis products, with profits dedicated to social causes.

The Vermont registered company’s strategy involves partnering with for-profit businesses that will pay B3 a royalty to use its formulas, packaging and trademarks.

The company says that 100% of its profits will be split between three entities: 10% will go to the Last Prisoner Project, an organization dedicated to freeing individuals impacted by cannabis criminalization; another 10% will be donated to the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance, whose mission is to “secure sustainable power, ensure agency, and provide security for American Descendants of Slavery (ADOS)”; and the remaining 80% will be administered in partnership with NuProject as grants to Black cannabis entrepreneurs.

According to the B3 website, the company intends to sell “Great Pot and use the power of our business to Right the Wrongs of the War on Drugs”.

The company also says it hopes to encourage sustainability by using packaging with minimal plastic and by growing cannabis organically with no nonorganic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides.