Matthew Robinson still can’t believe it. ” It’s like I won the lottery! », ignites this 37-year-old African-American. A wide smile lights up his face, often imbued with seriousness. The life of this former drug dealer changed a few weeks ago when he learned that he could legally sell cannabis. Since then, everything has gone a hundred miles an hour.
This Friday in January, the sun has not yet risen when he leaves his home in Albany, the capital of New York State, for Manhattan. Three hours on the road and a few traffic jams later here he is in Bleecker Street for training on the subject. Two telephones in hand, hood on his head, he rushes into gray rooms.
On the sidewalk, Marquis Hayes, 42, takes a last puff from his vaper before joining him. Even if he has swapped the cowboy hat he usually likes for a black docker’s cap, this chef, wearing a red velvet jacket over an orange T-shirt, does not go unnoticed. He too has just received the authorization to launch into this business after having had to deal with justice in his youth. He returned fissa from the San Juan Islands, in the State of Washington, not far from the border with Canada, where he spends part of the year, to be present. “I am given the keys to do what I know how to do so well without being illegal this time”, he lets go 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 have received, at the end of November 2022, a provisional license from the State of New York to sell a locally grown and tested herb. in laboratory. A new step, almost two years after this democratic state legalized the recreational use of marijuana for those over 21 in places where smoking is allowed.
The marketing of cannabis could represent 1.2 billion dollars (1.1 billion euros) in turnover there from 2023 and 4.2 billion dollars four years later. Enough to make the State of New York and its twenty million inhabitants the largest legal market for this drug in the United States.
At Bleecker Street, this is the first time that the licensees have met. The opportunity to meet, discuss, but also to deepen everything related to the logistics of their future points of sale. ” A little annoying “, sighs Marquis Hayes. “Not uninteresting”, tempers Matthew Robinson.
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