Drug Kingpin to Dispensary CEO with Coss Marte

Before states started legalizing weed shops, most of the legacy growers, transporters, and dealers who got arrested for running the underground cannabis economy were Black and brown entrepreneurial-minded men trying to make a better life for themselves. In states that have adopted cannabis social equity laws, people formerly incarcerated for selling weed before it was cool are now able to get assistance to enter the legal market first.

So what’s life like now for legacy dealers who can bring legal cannabis shops to their neighborhoods? And what did they have to build and go through to get us cannabis before there was a legal market?

In this episode, host Brit Smith talks to Coss Marte, a formerly incarcerated New York City drug kingpin who is now the CEO of CONBUD; NYC’s first cannabis dispensaries that will soon be staffed entirely by formerly incarcerated individuals.

Coss discusses his upbringing in NYC’s lower east side, and how he ran a multi-million dollar drug delivery network that led to his 7-year-stint in New York’s notorious Rikers Island Prison where he continued dealing and endured solitary confinement.

Coss talks about why he set up CONBODY; a fitness regime that got New Yorkers into shape like they do in prison, what he's done to get back into the cannabis industry now it's legal in his city, and which legacy strains he's bringing back to his neighborhood with his two CONBUD cannabis stores, which are set to open at the end of the summer in the Bronx and the Lower East Side.

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