In April, Freedom of speech opposite the banner promising freedom of speech shows some of the billboards that New York City had paid to place in Florida, e.g.,
On June 1, the New York Times did a story on two people who moved from Tampa to NYC, just as Eric Adams had hoped. The move was not for the expected reason, however. “New York’s Weed Rush Is Here. They Came to Cash In.”:
For generations, entrepreneurs and dreamers have moved to New York City to strike it big. Now they’re coming to sell a lot of cannabis.
Just as they were getting into a pandemic rhythm of deliveries [of marijuana] and drop-offs, the George Floyd protests took over Tampa’s streets. Every time C. and S. were driving after curfew, they felt as if they might be targeted by police, who were out in greater numbers. During one cannabis delivery, C. noticed a car following him, and he worried it was driven by undercover police officers — either that or counterprotesters; he couldn’t tell. After the unmarked car was joined by five marked police vehicles, he told S., who was in the passenger seat with their delivery of edibles and flower, to throw everything out the window, call their lawyer, call their neighbor. The neighbor told him there were vehicles that looked like unmarked police cars in front of their house.
Concerned about raids and arrests, they decided they had to leave town. … she lobbied hard for New York. They both had relatives there, and a cannabis market was emerging in the city.
In New York, Mayor Eric Adams has proposed that the city invest $4.8 million next year in the local cannabis industry, which is expected to generate nearly $1.3 billion in the first year of legal sales.
This is also an inspiring story about the benefits of immigration:
“My dad’s Ecuadorean,” C. says. “My family’s Ecuadorean. In Miami, there’s not that many Ecuadoreans, so it was nice to be in a neighborhood where things that people talk about or say or the news that might be going on, I can kind of relate to.”
And an inspiring story about hard work:
Once settled, they spent their life savings — thousands of dollars — to buy a package of cannabis from Colorado, hoping that would enable them to establish their New York business. It didn’t. “I’ve been selling marijuana since I was like a teenager in Miami,” C. says. “Every now and then I would do a rookie mistake.” This deal was one of them. They had planned to both sell the cannabis and use some of it for giveaways — which they thought would help them gain a following in Brooklyn — but it was lost in transport. They had to get cannabis on credit in order to have something to sell.
The article informs us that “C” is 32 years old. So he was selling marijuana illegally for at least 10 years (Wikipedia says that Floridians voted to legalize medical marijuana at the end of 2016).
Taiwan builds semiconductor factories, New York builds small cannabis businesses.
I guess a constant stream of New York Elite Twitter posts under the influence is guaranteed:
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/liberal-americans-are-six-times-more-likely-to-smoke-marijuana-than-conservatives-poll-finds/
Twenty-four percent of liberals smoke cannabis, compared to 4 percent of conservatives and 12 percent of moderates.
I don’t know anything about the cannabis industry and unlike crypto, have not blindly invested in it. My assumption from this article indicates that cannibis is a “high touch” delivery business with no ability to deliver via a private carrier. This would appear to bode well for shopping malls that will need people in the stores and cannabis could be one of the drivers.