Inside a Brooklyn smoke shop, past rows of bongs and other paraphernalia, a display case is piled high with legal hemp and CBD — but a store employee has some advice.
“That’s not the stuff you want,” he confides to a reporter who had been wordlessly eyeing the display.Unprompted, the worker reaches behind the counter — but not before idly musing, “you look like a cop” — and produces a plastic shopping bag containing what he says are genuine marijuana gummies, imported from California.
“I can sell you mushrooms, too,” he adds.
It’s become a familiar scene in New York City. The state legalized adult-use marijuana more than a year ago but is yet to issue a single dispensary license. The result has been a weed free-for-all: Cannabis seems to be for sale everywhere — head shops, bodegas, even from folding tables on street corners. Some dealers brazenly sell in public, and many boast their products were grown in California.
