A trip through the wild, winding world of New York City’s legal (and not-so-legal) cannabis market
MY INITIATION INTO the cannabis trade began in a middle school bathroom. Dime bags led to ounces, which led to pounds, and in my early twenties, my partner “SOME” and I were doing Canadian border crossings and road trips from Northern California to New York City, where we landed loads off Arthur Avenue in the Bronx.
It was a side hustle that quickly became a main hustle when I realized that journalism and documentary filmmaking were not-for-profit endeavors. Some people have a trust fund — I had a weed fund. It afforded me the ability to create art at my own leisure.
I built delivery services from the ground up, handing out cards in Tompkins Square Park while walking my American bulldog, Danny DeVito. On and off for more than a decade, my team and I carved thousands of miles through New York City’s streets on two wheels, green-grid cyclists serving up that Sour Diesel. When New York state legalized cannabis possession in 2021, I was among the first to transition to a gray-market retail business. It was always meant to be a temporary venture — as the city announced the opening of the first licensed stores, I resigned myself to the fact that the end of prohibition was here. Like my grandmother Mary Kelly Bulger used to say, “You can’t beat the government.” [Read More @ RollingStone]
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© Cannabis Business Executive
