Housing Works operates under the first of 36 retail licences. The organization takes care of the homeless, AIDS patients and ex-convicts.
Bubatz on Broadway: In New York, legal marijuana was sold for recreational purposes for the first time in US state history since Thursday. A Manhattan store (Broadway 750) operated by the nonprofit Housing Works opened its doors to the public at 4:20 p.m. local time — a nod to number 420 (pronounced twenty past four), which has long been a code for the use of cannabis is.
Housing Works operates the first of 36 retail licenses issued to date in the US state. The organization mainly deals with the homeless, ex-convicts and AIDS sick people. The profits from the sale should flow back into this business. New York’s legislature paved the way for legally available cannabis in March 2021 after a long dispute and gave some groups priority in licensing.
Fair trade, fight against racism
According to the civil rights organization ACLU in 2019, black New Yorkers were arrested for weed 4.5 times more often than white New Yorkers, despite the same use.
Mayor of New York Eric Adams he said in a statement on Thursday that it was “a new chapter for all those who have been most harmed by the failed policies of the past.” At the same time, unlicensed resellers are increasingly being phased out. When the law was passed last year a legal gray area emerged and unregulated sales soared within months.
There’s also a lot of money at stake for New York: The US state of more than 20 million inhabitants expects a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry and annual tax revenues of hundreds of millions of US dollars in the coming years.
(APA/dpa)
