JAMAICA, Queens (PIX11) — New York City’s first legal recreational marijuana shop outside of Manhattan opened Thursday in Queens.
Notably, it is also the first shop in New York state where the lead owner is a woman. It’s called “Good Grades,” located at 162-03 Jamaica Avenue, and its owner, Extasy James, had her first customer, Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. Richards danced around a bit after buying his gummies.
“You did it,” Richards said, shaking her hand. “You’re on your way.”
As a young girl growing up in Jamaica, Queens, James said her immigrant father was kicked out of the country after being arrested for selling weed to help his family get by.
“So he got deported, and my mom is a mother of four, so I’m the oldest, so I took on that responsibility,” James said.
Now with the state of New York prioritizing the first few recreational cannabis licenses for folks impacted by the war on drugs.
As Richards puts it, the opening of Good Grades in Jamaica is “…transformational for Southeast Queens. What was once a tool to target communities of color will now be a crucial and legal piece of our economic puzzle that will create jobs and wealth in the same communities.”
However, the pace of opening recreational marijuana storefronts like these has been a slow burn.
“Brooklyn, we’re coming,” pledged Chris Alexander, a New York State official on hand from the Office of Cannabis Management.
They promised to pick up the pace, especially following a court lifted the injunction preventing the state from issuing recreational storefront licenses.
“The goal was to get this right. That has been our focus,” Alexander said. “Yes, that has taken some time, but that’s going to stay our focus, to make sure we roll out stores like the ones operated by the James family.”
Good Grades is only open temporarily for the next month and a half while permits and plans are finalized. It will then close for a few weeks for the permanent setup.
This is a model New Yorkers are going to see increasingly used across the state to get more shops open and speed up the legal recreational cannabis store rollout.
