NY issues first licenses for legal pot dispensaries Transcript

First, let’s just point out the announcement made here at the state office building today around noon, the recipients say is a real-life changer.

The feeling is unexplainable, because it doesn’t really feel real. Even though I know it’s here and I know it’s happening, it just doesn’t feel real. But I know it’s real. It’s just nothing I can explain.

Matthew Robinson responds to having just been approved to sell recreational marijuana in New York State. He now has permission to create a dispensary like this after having had to serve time behind bars for marijuana possession.

I got arrested and booked on marijuana charges for a fight I had nothing to do with. This is definitely justice. Justice is being served and it’s being served in a nice warm dish right now.

Robinson also owns this contracting business. It makes him one of 28 business owners who won licenses to sell cannabis. He’ll do so in his hometown of Albany, but he got guidance on applying from a foundation based out of the Harlem Building Alliance here in Manhattan. His mentor makes this point.

There’s a 60-day period for public comment. Please put in your comments and feedback with regards to what this industry is going to look like.

The decision by New York’s Office of Cannabis Management today specifically granted licenses to people who’ve had to serve time behind bars for marijuana-related offenses. Helping them is what Queens-based nonprofit Life Camp specializes in. Now the people it helps can market cannabis.

20 years ago, I was incarcerated, and it had an impact on my life where I lost my kids and, economically, I almost got deported and fought that. Now to see this day, it’s a blessing.

Life Camp is one of eight nonprofits granted cannabis licenses. Erica Ford is its founder.

[inaudible 00:01:59] now this is a billion-dollar industry. It is a joy to be able to push through those barriers.

In total, at least seven licenses were granted in Manhattan, six in Queens, three in the Bronx, two on Staten Island. But look at Brooklyn. None for now. That’s because a lawsuit by a corporation has argued that the cannabis licensing policy hurts out-of-state businesses in certain parts of the state.

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Including Brooklyn and Westchester County, by the way, this is a $4.2 billion industry according to state estimates, and the state has allocated $200 million to help the licensees open their businesses. The executive director of the Office of Cannabis Management says that we should see businesses open by the beginning of the new year, possibly by Christmas time.