Across New York City, brazen pot dealers hock everything from pre-rolls to gummies on folding tables in parks, off gaudy trucks on major streets, and in storefronts painted purple, green, and gray. These illicit vendors have impressed upon a confused public that they’re operating above board by taking advantage of perceived loopholes in the law, while cops, for the most part, have looked the other way.
Authorities now claim the Wild West-like sales landscape, which has emerged since the state legalized adult-use recreational marijuana in March 2021, is beginning to be tamed. But according to conversations with purveyors, legal experts, and other members of the cannabis community, that’s only happening in theory.
About two weeks ago, the NYPD seized what Chief of Patrol Jeffrey Maddrey called “19 illegal vehicles” that were distributing marijuana to Manhattan passersby. “Up in smoke,” Maddrey tweeted on August 16. “While others follow the rules, these trucks and their vendors don’t have permits so we took action!”
Two days later, Mayor Eric Adams, who in 2021 campaigned as the tough-on-crime candidate, said that the scofflaw trucks’ street presence was “not acceptable.”
“This is not going to be a city where we snub our noses and break the law,” he added. “Those illegal trucks should not be on our streets selling marijuana.”
Recreational adult-use weed sales are still illegal in New York — to put it plainly — but the sharp rhetoric from authorities as they attempt to illustrate the consequences of unlawful pot peddling comes with some performance-art twists. The weed trucks towed last month were not taken in for off-the-books marijuana sales; it was because their operators did not possess proper food vendor permits from the Health Department. And this show of force came two months after the NYPD impounded a dozen similar mobile marijuana vendors from Times Square for accruing mountainous unpaid parking debts and one month after the state slapped 17 New York City cannabis storefronts and trucks with cease and desist letters, without making immediate arrests.
In spite of the performative uptick in enforcement, there are plenty of bold buddha brokers continuing to operate out in the open. They appear poised to stay their course for the remaining period before licenses are finally awarded to prospective vendors in the coming months. Many of these purveyors are people of color, hopeful for permits after the state’s regulatory body, the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), promised an inclusive process and representative equity for minorities in the industry, particularly those who’d previously been incarcerated for marijuana infractions.
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Their time may soon come. The OCM opened the first window for applications, from people with weed convictions and experience owning a “legal business,” on Aug. 25. But while the eager entrepreneurs who’ve already opened up shop may continue to avoid immediate legal penalties, they could already have hurt their chances at licensure by refusing to wait for it.
“A lot of people are breaking the law all the time,” says Michael McQueeny, an attorney specializing in cannabis law. “What it comes down to is: What do the laws say and how are they going to be enforced?” In McQueeny’s eyes, the NYPD’s mass impounding of weed trucks were examples of law enforcement doing its best to “send a message” in the most conspicuous way possible, with a crackdown on very visible rule breakers, “so everybody understands there are tangible consequences.”
Many of those who were supposed to get that memo apparently did not. Among the marijuana vendors who are staying open is one woman who runs a Brooklyn cannabis storefront, where a registration fee gives members access to “free” weed. “Everybody’s operating in a very gray area,” she says.
Speaking to Rolling Stone after the vehicle seizures, she did not wish to reveal her name or the name of her storefront out of fears the state would challenge its legal standing. Though last fall the OCM said such setups are illegal, in her mind the business is legit. She says the state laws do not permit proceeds from marijuana-for-cash exchanges and, thus, since the club is not profitable, she’s within the bounds of the law. Her club simply exists as “a middleman in between the farmer and the consumer,” she says, and she will confidently apply for sales licensure through the state.
“There’s not going to be any legal action taken against me, I’m certain of that,” she says. “The worst that would happen is [law enforcement would] ask me to stop, and I would if they did.”
Across the Newtown Creek, in Astoria, Queens — where pot shops and weed trucks have become ubiquitous — the Green Empress vehicle is parked on 30th Avenue and Steinway Street. A bright, multicolored LED sign mounted on the top of the truck flashes words like “pain,” “depression” and “epilepsy,” conditions that may be treated by the marijuana products the truck’s co-managers have made available to the community.
“We’re here to educate the public,” says one of the Green Empress operators, who identified himself only as “Ghost.” “We’re trying to help people out.”
Green Empress stands two blocks from where the 114th precinct towed away what it called an “unregistered cannabis bus” on August 19. (According to an officer at the precinct, “unregistered” likely referred to its non-standing as a tax-paying business, pot dealer or not.) Friendly Green Empress consultants seated behind a sliding plastic window issue bags of weed to people offering donations for the information — another business model popular with today’s in-plain-sight pot purveyors. Two paper menus listing more than a dozen strands are taped to the side of the truck; inside hangs a framed certificate of licensure from the OCM, not for marijuana distribution, but for hemp sales.
Ghost and his partner, Ben Tobee, are not concerned about the Green Empress getting towed. They say they pay their parking tickets and don’t expect the city to receive 311 complaint calls against them, something else that’s triggered NYPD vehicle seizures in the past.
“The neighborhood [has] accepted us,” Tobee says. “If you treat someone good, in return, the majority of the time, they will treat you good, too.”
A few blocks west, in front of a Rite Aid pharmacy, stands the All The Smoke truck. Batches of weed wrapped in packaging reminiscent of Sour Patch Kids rest on shelves behind a chest-level window. Posted next to it is a sign reading “NOT FOR SALE.” One of its operators, a Latino man who did not wish to disclose his name, says he too is on a mission of public education.
“I’ve always felt the average New Yorker isn’t that aware of what they smoke and where it’s coming from,” he says. After providing such lessons, he says, “we gladly take donations.” Those who offer them “can select the bag of their choice.”
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
All The Smoke has been open for a month and its operator says he’s only interacted with law enforcement on two occasions: when the truck received a parking ticket, which according to him was paid in a timely fashion, and when a police officer asked about the truck’s operations. Once the manager explained the donation model to the officer, he says the cop instructed him to post the “NOT FOR SALE” sign and said he could otherwise carry on. (When asked for a comment on this interaction, the 114th Precinct referred Rolling Stone to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner of Public Information. In response to questions about the city’s uptick in cannabis enforcement the past few months, the office sent an email with the marijuana law passed last year.)
While the All The Smoke manager says he is worried about his truck being seized, he doesn’t believe such an outcome is likely because many other impounded trucks offered food products. All The Smoke does not and, therefore, isn’t in need of a Health Department food vendor license.
The All The Smoke manager, as well as Ghost and Ben Tobee, who are Black, say they will seek state sales licensure and believe their respective truck operations will give each of them a leg up on other applicants. In their minds it shows the OCM they know how to run a business, namely one in the cannabis space.
But when asked if owning a weed truck or a cannabis club with accessible bags of marijuana will better such vendors’ chances at licensure, the OCM’s Executive Director, Chris Alexander, says, “It doesn’t help them at all.” Regardless of creative business models, prescribed community service and whether or not the pot being distributed is in candy form or flower, the state says these operations should be shut down. “This is solely people who are money hungry and are trying to get ahead of what we’re trying to build here [and] to do a cash grab,” Alexander says.
When it comes to cracking down on these illicit vendors, Alexander says he just wants the trucks off the street and stores to stop issuing weed. As far as the vehicle impoundings over missing food vendor licenses and parking tickets go, Alexander explains that they’re examples of the NYPD “using the authority in front of them to make sure that these operations don’t continue.” The distributors, he says, are “violating several municipal laws, as well as our cannabis law.”
Incarcerating folks strictly for illegal pot sales flies in the face of the sprit behind the state’s new pro-marijuana policy. It was enacted last year in part as a response to the maligned history of city and state law enforcement arrests of a disproportionate number of minorities for such violations. And a major driver of cannabis legalization was the promise of regulated industry equity for so many people of color who’d been jailed under previous legislation. Futhermore, as McQueeny, the New York cannabis attorney says, once a legislative body has legalized adult recreational use marijuana, “it becomes a very difficult proposition to then turn around and say we’re locking people up for cannabis again.”
A lack of city resources also make mass roundups of felons, for infractions that in a few months will be permissible, especially difficult.
“There are more important priorities for the police, such as people being killed and shot,” says Jerry Goldman, another New York attorney who practices in the cannabis space. “The state has taken the position that it’s not legal; people in the market have taken the position that it is. Ultimately the arbiter of this is the courts — and then the state when they issue licenses.”
While Goldman is not in favor of stricter law enforcement on this issue, he still says the past year of pop-up pot businesses founded after the shift in state policy, as well as the NYPD’s laissez-faire response, has been “bizarre.” He believes the time it took for the state to construct a cannabis board and generate regulations after legalizing weed consumption — all hiccupped by last year’s ousting of Governor Andrew Cuomo — built “tensions” in the system.
Such problems are not unlike what has happened in previous states that legalized. Illicit markets have remained prosperous in California, Colorado, and elsewhere, years after their state governments passed pro-marijuana legislation. Among the reasons, many weed consumers in those states have been unwilling to spend top dollar on state-tested pot, and have maintained relationships with their longtime, trusted illicit dealers. The thriving of such purveyors continues to have detrimental effects on some of the regulated markets those states cultivated. Just last month, California cut a tax on marijuana growers, for example, because they were struggling to compete with illicit weed providers, who were offering up product at a cheaper rate.
Griffin Lotz for Rolling Stone
“The longer period of time that the traditional market, which used to operate in the shadows, can operate in the sunlight, the more difficult it will be for the regulated market to succeed,” Goldman says.
Perhaps that’s why, after a year of “not heavy-handedness,” as Mayor Adams has described it, weed trucks are now being snatched from the streets. Once the state issues its initial adult-use recreational marijuana sales licenses later this year or early next, stores selling regulated pot — managed in many cases by people of color — will open up with operators presumably paying taxes on the products they sell. The less competition, the better.
“I think that’s a very critical aspect here,” McQueeny says of the pending licenses and the recent uptick in enforcement. “Make no mistake, this era is not easy.”
Will it have a happy ending in New York, with an inclusive body of tax-paying vendors selling bundles and bundles of safe, state-regulated weed?
“We don’t know,” says Goldman. “We don’t know if the story is going to be different a year from now. We don’t know if this is a blip or if this is a problem.”