On a chilly Leap Day morning, Mayor Eric Adams smiled as he stood next to Queens State Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, Cannabis NYC Founding Director Dasheeda Dawson, a mute Sheriff Anthony Miranda, and new dispensary owner Leeann Mata to talk business in the weed shop—Matawana Dispensary, the first to open under with the help of a new Housing Works-sponsored network called the CAURD Community initiative, and the first dispensary in Brooklyn owned by a Black woman.
The tone of the proceedings was accordingly triumphant, optimistic: “To have a shop open here on 5th Avenue is really—you’re like the modern day George Jefferson, movin’ on up!” Adams said to Mata, to hearty laughter from the room. “This dispensary opening is the signature to what we want to accomplish and what we want to do throughout the city,” he continued. “We are lighting up our economy with the nation’s most equitable cannabis industry. Others attempted, and they didn’t get it right—we want to make sure we’re getting it right, and we’re making history.”
Mata, whose dispensary will officially open at—wink—4:20 p.m. Thursday afternoon, thanked Adams for his support with a Matawana-branded gym bag, decorated with her dispensary’s logo, some stray nuggets of weed, and emblazoned