Matthew Robinson still can’t believe it. “It’s like I won the lottery! ‘ enthuses this 37-year-old African American woman. A big smile lights up his face, often full of seriousness. This former drug dealer’s life changed a few weeks ago when he found out he could legally sell cannabis. Everything has been going at a hundred miles an hour since then.
On this Friday in January, the sun has not yet risen when he leaves his home in Albany, the capital of the state of New York, for Manhattan. Three hours on the road and a few traffic jams later, he’s standing here on Bleecker Strasse to learn about the subject. Two phones in hand, hood on his head, he storms into gray rooms.
On the sidewalk, Marquis Hayes, 42, takes one last puff from his steamer before joining him. Even though he swapped his otherwise popular cowboy hat for a black docker cap, the chef doesn’t go unnoticed in a red velvet jacket over an orange T-shirt. He, too, has just received approval to enter the business after having to deal with the judiciary in his youth. He returned fissa from the San Juan Islands in Washington State, not far from the border with Canada, where he spends part of the year to be there. “I’ve been given the keys to do what I do so well without being illegal this time,” he blurts out with his submachine gun flow.
Delay the arrival of large groups
The two men are among the first thirty-six lucky ones — twenty-eight entrepreneurs and eight nonprofits — to receive a tentative license from New York State to sell a locally grown and tested herb in late November 2022. in the laboratory. A new move nearly two years after this Democratic state legalized recreational marijuana use for those over the age of 21 in places where smoking is legal.
Cannabis commercialization there could represent $1.2 billion in sales by 2023 and $4.2 billion four years later. Enough to make New York State, with a population of twenty million, the largest legal market for this drug in the United States.
The licensees meet for the first time on Bleecker Street. The opportunity to meet, to discuss but also to deepen everything related to the logistics of your future points of sale. “A bit boring,” sighs Marquis Hayes. “Not uninteresting,” admits Matthew Robinson.
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