 New York City, it's your mayor Eric Adams. Welcome to the Gist of Duncast. Let's get to it. Welcome back. This is going to be a great conversation. Oftentimes people hear me as I walk through the streets and I just like say, you know, it's just, you smell weed everywhere. People are just enjoying the freedom of cannabis and we have in the studio with us the amazing Tashita Dawson, who is the founding director of Cannabis NYC, is really in this space. She knows about this space. This is something she believes in. She talks about equities. She talks about how to properly roll it out. And so we want to engage in a real conversation. I am just like really excited. You know, how did you start out? Give us some background. Well, first of all, thank you so much Mayor Adams for picking me for the position. I'm so glad to be back home. For me, it's a full circle moment. I started in the industry as a patient. I have early MS. It is something I've been really grappling with for the last 15 years, to be honest. A very high powered senior executive was slowed down by this auto immune deteriorating disease. And I became a very regular customer of the legacy market in New York City as an executive. But when the bill passed for a medical program, none of the ailments that I had were listed and weren't included. So in some ways I became a patient refugee and I had to move out west. And when I got out there, my aunt, who is actually a baby boomer and she had already been a cannabis patient, she helped me navigate through the entire system in Arizona. And I saw right away that they needed my leadership skills, my strategy capabilities. And really the understanding of the illegal aspects of the market, as well as illegal. And so yeah. You know, it's interesting. I remember back when I was a state senator, Montell Williams came up to Albany. I believe it was MS also. I know it was something that he was dealing with at the time. And the stiffening of the joints, the discomfort. And he just stated that he, when he used cannabis, it was just a total different game for him. He was able to move around. He was able to just really function. And that was a time. We're talking good Lord. We're talking 2000 and probably eightish when it was really just demonized. And when you talked about cannabis, people will look at you differently and say, what is this? My medical and what have you. How did you see your way through that? So you went from a patient to an advocate. And then there was that transformation. I used to jokingly say I went from Target to THC because I was at Target. And I learned so much about branding and bringing things to America in a way that folks had never seen. So there was, for me, multicultural hair and beauty, as well as the plus size, it was a lot of rebranding and showing something that we've seen but talking about it differently. So I branded myself the weedhead. And that was, at first, a lot of laughs, but people could see that I was on my way to the head of the weed industry and that was the way I would frame it. And that all of the old connotations that came with the weedhead, I was breaking those stereotypes left and right by my productivity, by my intensity and my success. And so that's what I did to get around it. And you turned pain into purpose. Absolutely. And I think all of us who found purpose can tell you about those painful moments. And you almost have to make a decision. As my mother used to say, the dark place does not necessarily mean it's a burial, it's actually a planted. And you turned that around. But even prior to coming here, you were doing stuff in the space because that's how you got on my radar. Share some of the things you were doing even before you came to this position. Yeah, I mean, well, New York City is a big city. It's the biggest city. And so I'm glad I had some training beforehand. So I was the czar for the city of Portland in Oregon and helped them really establish some equitable initiatives that they didn't have necessarily before. And it really got a couple of teeth in some ways on working within inside government. And before that, it was government entities across the country that were hiring me as a consultant to help come up with the framework and the strategy. How do we make this successful? But more importantly, how do we make it equitable? And a lot of governments had not been doing it before 2020, before George Floyd. And so it was really great to kind of go on the inside to see how this all works before coming to such a complicated and big city like New York City to be able to be battle tested, if you will, as I come into this market with some real theories that have already had some precedent on the books, but also some innovations that you could only do in New York City. Right, well said. We will increase enforcement against unlicensed cannabis shops. And let me be clear to those who think you're going to come into our communities without a license, put our kids at risk, steal jobs away from people trying to do it the right way. Let's be clear, man, you must be smoking something because that's not going to happen. You know, it's fascinating. I was speaking with the lawmaker who passed the legislation, I think in Paterson, New Jersey, and they really wanted to lean into the legacy part of it. And he said, you know, Eric, we just didn't get it right. It just, the wheels sort of fell off the car and there's some things we would have done differently. How do we balance this unique thing about equity and enforcement? Can we find ourselves in this strange place? You don't want to return to the days of being heavy handed, but at the same time, you have to come with some level of regulations so that those who have fought for this legislation, someone is not jumping the line. What do we do? I think we're already starting and doing it. I got to commend you as well as Sheriff Miranda because the truth is we are enforcing with equity and education as a foundation. I think our past enforcement was largely uneducated in the harms we were doing for communities, as well as the medicinal benefits for thousands of years for this plant. And now we know that people aren't bad people because they consume cannabis and they're not bad people because they actually want to sell cannabis either. Taking that mindset, I think we're already tackling sort of some of the equity issues that played out in the way it was previously enforced. But I agree with you. I think we have a challenge of how quickly can we move to educate those folks within our communities that have actually want the intention of licensing. And that's a lot of what we've been doing with cannabis NYC. We want to move legacy into legal. We want to make the plug legit is what I've been saying for a while. And I think it starts with community education and awareness of the market and the resources that we have in the city. And I spoke to a young man the other day who has two locations. And it's not as easy as people think that upfront money of getting the product, of making sure that you have the right size, a site. So there's some layers to that. The mere fact you have a license is not the end. It's actually the beginning. What are some of the layers that you go through? Hey, I'm lucky I have a license. What happens next? And what are the different types of licenses? So let's start with where we are right now. We're in a conditional licensing track that the state created while they could work on the bigger part of the industry. And they focus very much for the retail dispensaries on people who have been previously arrested or and or very close family members that had done the same experience. This is the first city, the first state to actually do that. So I want to again, and commend them on it. But again, getting the license is not necessarily getting you open. And so we've got a job to do at cannabis NYC. We've been putting people in the right rooms. Sometimes I find that the licensees just don't even know what steps are necessary. And so they need the right consultant in order to like order their priorities and say, hey, you should be looking at real estate. You need to build and grow your capital and or investment if you don't have that already. In this case, of course, some of the folks wanted to come in thinking that there would be some state support. And that has been a little bit challenged. But I do think that where they're now kind of having a hurdle is how do we get into the right real estate? How do we make sure that we're following all the rules 500 feet from a school, 250 feet from House of Worship? And in New York City, I know in Brooklyn it's going to be hard to find something 250 feet from a house of worship, right? And so it is those little layers that people are working through right now to get themselves open. I recall you giving me a nice booklet. You sort of explained all of this. And we have material where a person can actually, they're not starting from, let me figure it out, you have a nice way of giving people reading material on what to do. Talk about that for me. Well, the best part about Cannabis NYC is that we're within the Department of Small Business Services. So for a lot of the just business challenges, we already have programming that can support entrepreneurs. And so we definitely direct them and field questions that direct them to our division of business services and the resources there. Our business solution centers now have account managers that are being trained in Cannabis so they understand how to answer questions. But we also convene every six weeks to licensees. We put them in rooms where experts, people who have been in the industry, that's the best part I think about. My job is, my network is vast and I'm able to pull people globally who are experts in Cannabis to come and help our licensees right away for free. And of course we have our various workshops. I've held a few. These are hours typically online that we're spending going through the regulations, walking through all of the next steps that they have. Inevitably, every business is different. So we're kind of, I think, giving broad strokes, but everybody can also set up 30 minutes with me. I love that people can meet with you and I think I'm taking sort of that same mindset. You can set up, I'm very accessible. Set up 30 minutes with me allows me to get a little bit more into your business and understand what specific things we can provide for the specific challenges that the business has. And so the types of licenses, I know they're a grower license, they're a retail license. I'm hearing so many different conversations. What are the types? So in the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, that's the law that passed that made this legal. There are nine license types. It starts from the ground up, so the nursery. This is the first in the country to see a nursery license. So we're really excited about that in the genetics. Cultivator, the processor, the distributor, this is getting it B2B, not the same as delivery, but there is a delivery-only license. Then there's retail, but then there are some special licenses that we're gonna really pay attention to here in New York City, the micro-business license. That means vertically integrated, you can go from seed to sale. And that's something we're really trying to make sure we have the preparation for here in New York City. There's also the cooperative license. That's another one where I think New York City can really do well by getting people and groups together that maybe individually wouldn't have enough resources to do such a large cultivation or such a large processing, but together they can do that. And then New York City, of course, we're gonna be, I think, dominant in the world for on-site consumption. Interesting, like a club? Yes, a lounge, or, you know, some would say a workspace, a yoga studio, really any opportunity where you can consume, and there's many different ways to consume. Where are we now on that? Do we allow on-site consumption? Can I open up a lounge where you could smoke indoors? No, not legally. Okay. Yeah. But what we are is the state has agreed for retailers to be able to add on on-site consumption. So already have a retail license and you're opening up your store. You may be able to have a connecting place or something that another location right nearby that's been approved for on-site consumption. I'm not talking about a selling and smoking on-site. Can a person, can they have a lounge where it's a rooftop and you could go and smoke, sit outside your rooftop and smoke, because it's legal. What prevents that? I think that actually that is legal. When they're outdoor, wherever they're able to still smoke cigarettes, we're able to consume cannabis, so that is. I think we get more challenged because we know that there are some spaces where it's more indoor and we haven't, you know, between our Clean Air Act, those are the challenges we're working through in TOH right now. That's understood. And we have continued our enforcement efforts in recent weeks against bad actors. We have given them plenty of time to clean up their act and we won't stop until every illegal smoke shop is rolled up and stubbed out and know that there are ways to sell legal cannabis. Legal cannabis is expected to be a $1.3 billion industry, $40 million per year in tax revenues and it will support 19,000 to 24,000 local jobs. And so we have a moral obligation as well as a legal obligation to ensure that it is done correctly. Let's talk enforcement for a moment. How much of an impact the large number of illegal shops that are opening? I just read something the other day that there was an individual who was basically sponsoring a lot of illegal shops. I truly believe that there's a venture capitalist that's behind all of these spots that are opening up and we need to zero in. But how much is it a negative impact of these illegal spots on the legal spots we're trying to open? It's a huge negative impact. For one, as a person who was an advocate on the ground for a long time, this is not the cannabis industry that we envision. Most of these stores do not have the science. We don't know exactly what they're selling. There's a lot of trademark infringement and look alike. And so it's confusing to adults as well as young people. And the reality is their target audience and target market are the least knowledgeable cannabis users. People who are very recent tourists or they're just wanting to find an experience or young people. I think that they're doing a disservice for the overall industry. People who fought for the social justice components are really confused about what are these stores doing for social justice? Their cannabis tax revenue is not being taken and allocated to the communities disproportionately impacted. So there's a lot of negative backlash to the work we've done by having these stores open. And then right now, one of my interns is actually working on a pricing, a shopping comparative pricing project where we're looking at what's happening on the legal side versus the legal side. And so the price points are different, obviously. And that tends to, of course, draw on the demand. But luckily, we have a community that's very smart and very resilient. And they know that these people are not from their community. And we're seeing more and more as we do our public education campaign and I get out with NYCHA and out to the community that they're saying, hey, we are willing to support our community members who want to make this transition. But these folks, they don't know us and they're not contributing to us. How do we get rid of them? And I think it starts with boycotts, right? Don't put the demand in there. No demand means no supply. That's the first thing we learn in business school. But also, I think the work that has been done by our joint enforcement task force has been really critical to let them know that we're not playing about protecting people and protecting them. Right. And it's so important because if you really, those who are legal, they're paying the taxes, they're paying for the right testing, everything, you're not going to be able to keep it with someone that's just selling something that is not proven, not tested. And could it even be unhealthy for those who consume the product? Quick question before I let you go. Two quick questions. One, was it cannabis that they were smoking in the peace pipes back in the day? How long has cannabis been around? More than 2,000 years. Wow. It's been part of our American pharmacopoeia before the 1930s and truly through very, very sinister and racist thinking, cannabis became illegal. It was something that multi-culturally we all have a relationship with the plant. And I'm really excited to get us back to that. I think it's a gateway, not only for cannabis as medicine, but plants as medicine, which I know you understand. For me, it helped change my whole lifestyle, how I eat. What period did it actually become illegal? The first marijuana tax act was in 1937 and Engslinger passed that. But then later on in 1970, we had Nixon, we're really declaring the war on drugs and that impacted the world. They basically say, hey, if you are doing cannabis then you can't do business with us. Isn't it amazing that we made cannabis illegal and so many other things that are harmful are we allowed to happen? And that's why a lobbying and a power of who's making these decisions. And lastly, employment. There's some great opportunities, not only those who are selling the product, but learning the growing aspect of it, the agriculture aspect of it, learning how to create new devices to hold cannabis in. Like there's some real opportunities out there. Yes, as a STEM girl, I'm really excited about what's happening on the science, technology, engineering portion of this agriculture. If you add that a real steam. We actually are leapfrogging so many cities. We have the first CUNY to have a degree program is under the sciences actually. There is a lot of workforce development that we've already started. We've been working with Office of Criminal Justice to be able to place people even in the dispensaries. But from seed to solution, there's an area that people can learn more. I'm especially excited about young people having a different relationship with this plant. Learning about it first from a seed, as opposed to from the smoke. No, good stuff. Good stuff. Megavis College has a great program. I think CUNY needs to embrace this. This is a multi-billion dollar industry. What is predicted and how much of this industry can raise each year? Wow, I mean, right now we've been seeing a compounded annual growth rate in the 30s, which is a very conservative estimate. But most of the mature markets are three figures, 100 plus every year growth. We are anticipating 1.3 billion in New York City in our first full year. We haven't gotten there yet. But the sky's the limit because we haven't even started talking about hemp and the long money, all of the textiles that we can replace and soil remediation and just the work that we can do with the whole genus. Wow, I'm excited about that. 1.3, that's a lot of blunts. We're open, it's not all in blunts, right? We got some of the processed stuff as well. But, yes, it is a lot of weed. And we love NYC, right? Yes, yes, and listen, Sister Dawson, you are doing an amazing job with BLESS who have you in the administration as we move forward because you bring that balance, that balance of equity, economic development and really opening the doors to those who have been knocked out for so long. Keep doing what you're doing. We're excited about the future. If people want to find out more, what is the website that people can go to? Oh, yes, if you want to, you know, get plugs in, you got to sign up for the plug. That's on.nyc.gov backslash liftoff. Love it, love it. Thank you. Thank you. And this is the information I wanted to share today. I hope to see you for another episode of Get Stuff Done, C.A.S.