initiative, meant to attract and support cannabis business owners as the projected $1.3 billion industry develops, is now open. The city and state said they’re working hard to create jobs while also addressing the decades of harm over policing and trumped up “drug-related incarcerations” have had on Black and brown communities.
Adams simultaneously started pushing out the illegal and unregulated cannabis market that’s bubbled up all over the city since MRTA was signed into law on March 31, 2021. He said there won’t be arrests, but there also can’t be trucks on the streets openly selling and not paying taxes. “As one of the Black communities most harmed by the federal war on drugs and the state’s Rockefeller laws, we strongly believe that our people must benefit economically from the legalization of the billion-dollar marijuana industry,” said Regina Smith, executive director, Harlem Business Alliance in a statement. “Without tremendous resources from the city and state—especially startup capital and intensive culturally-competent, community-based, business development services—this will not happen.