US: New Yorker jailed during ‘war on drugs’ becomes cannabis pioneer

As a New York City teenager, 50-year old Roland Conner found himself harshly punished for minor offenses related to marijuana.

A 1991 arrest resulted in a months-long incarceration, as America’s flawed “war on drugs” had an unfairly disproportionate impact on Black and brown youth.

Since that period in his life, native New Yorker Conner has gone on to operate a property management business and manage a transitional housing facility in the Bronx borough.

His next horizon? Operating one of New York state’s newly licensed dispensaries for recreational cannabis, at a store he’s calling Smacked! in the upscale Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan.

Despite hundreds of unauthorized dispensaries sprouting all over the city, Smacked! is only the second legal dispensary to open in the state and the first one operated by someone formerly incarcerated on marijuana-related charges.

Conner is running the pop-up dispensary with his wife and son, and he soon plans to move into a more permanent space.