cannabis-infused products. ‘‘It’s
Tampa, so there are a lot of people
from the islands or the Caribbean.’’
Business fl ourished. By 2020, they
had eight employees and hundreds
of customers; they organized canna-
bis events where they sold edibles,
CBD products and ‘‘fl ower’’ (the
smokable parts of the plant). When
the pandemic hit, they remained
committed to their deliveries: Some
of their customers were elderly, in
pain and looking for alternative
therapies. ‘‘We were like Uber Eats,
sliding around the streets after the
curfews,’’ he says. They considered
themselves — and their customers
considered them — essential work-
ers. But despite the fact that there
was a nearly 50 percent increase
in the demand for legal cannabis
nationwide during the fi rst year of
the pandemic, they were not, legal-
ly speaking, essential workers. And
in Florida, though medical canna-
bis was legal, recreational was not.
Their ventures in the gray areas of
the recreational weed industry are
why they are only willing to be iden-
tifi ed by their middle initials, C. and
S., and do not want the name of their
business to be made public.
Just as they were getting into a
pandemic rhythm of deliveries and
drop-off s, the George Floyd protests
took over Tampa’s streets. Every
time C. and S. were driving after
curfew, they felt as if they might be
targeted by police, who were out in
greater numbers. During one can-
nabis delivery, C. noticed a car fol-
lowing him, and he worried it was
driven by undercover police offi cers
— either that or counterprotesters;
he couldn’t tell. After the unmarked
car was joined by fi ve marked police
vehicles, he told S., who was in the
passenger seat with their delivery
of edibles and fl ower, to throw
everything out the window, call
their lawyer, call their neighbor.
The neighbor told him there were
vehicles that looked like unmarked
police cars in front of their house.
Concerned about raids and
arrests, they decided they had to
leave town. For nearly a month,
they stayed with friends, afraid to
go home, and debated where they
might go next. He wanted to move
to the West Coast, someplace whereand dealt cannabis since high
school. He had some connections.
‘‘Luckily, where I was hanging out
at, my neighbor was an old head,
like, 70 years or 75 years old,’’ C. says.
‘‘He was selling hella weed.’’
A few weeks later, he sampled
one of S.’s fi rst batches of edibles:
green-tea madeleines. They were
the perfect balance of sweet and
earthy, spongy in texture. ‘‘They did
a number on me,’’ C. says. S. made
more desserts, like gummies and
dulce de leche cookies. By now, he
was no longer worrying about the
drug testing at work; he was focused
on supplying her cannabis. ‘‘I’m try-
ing to hang out with her,’’ he says.
‘‘So, I started selling them to people
in my neighborhood and really put-
ting some eff ort in.’’
A partnership — in romance, in
business — took shape. They sold
their goods at the kitchens where
she worked and at barbershops too.
‘‘We’d bring Rice Krispies treats, but
more gourmet — they were shaped
in a doughnut with white-chocolate
drizzle, just next-level stuff. Some-
times it’d be, like, fl an or tres leches.
We’d have drinks like guanabana,
or soursop, and, like, passion fruit,’’
he says, describing some of theirthe green rush was fl ush and legal.
He had Los Angeles in mind. But
she lobbied hard for New York.
They both had relatives there, and
a cannabis market was emerging in
the city. When S. lived in Boston,
she used to take the Chinatown bus
on the weekends to visit cousins or
friends in New York. ‘‘I can be enter-
tained by walking most of my day,
having a coff ee and just hanging out
in a park,’’ she says. ‘‘Those are the
things that I really enjoy doing, and
this is a city that’s great for that.’’ By
July 2020, the couple arrived in New
York, after fi nding an Airbnb in, as
C. puts it, ‘‘this awesome Islands
neighborhood.’’ Everybody was bar-
becuing outside, listening to music,
having the best time. New York was,
he says, ‘‘a breath of fresh air.’’Though cannabis is illegal at the
federal level, it is legal for recre-
ational use in 18 states (and Washing-
ton, D.C.) and for medical use in 37
states. New York made recreational
cannabis legal in March 2021, less
than a year after C. and S. moved to
the city. From that point on, peo-
ple 21 and older have been allowed
to possess up to three ounces of
cannabis for personal use (and to
keep up to fi ve pounds of cannabis
in their homes). Smoking cannabis
is permitted almost anywhere you
might smoke a cigarette, and police
offi cers are no longer able to stop
and search pedestrians only on the
basis of smelling it on them.
Legal sales from stores have
had to wait, though. Recreational
dispensaries are not yet operating
legally; that will most likely begin
happening by the end of this year.
Still, spend two minutes in Washing-
ton Square Park, where passers-by
are off ered memberships to can-
nabis clubs, and it’s clear that the
promised green rush is not on the
horizon: It’s here. Elsewhere around
the city, entrepreneurs provide a
‘‘gift’’ of cannabis after a customer
buys a work of art, say, or a T-shirt.
A $365 prix fi xe cannabis experience
in SoHo was advertised for Mother’s
Day on Tock, a restaurant website,
as an ‘‘8-course fi nely infused menu,
grand cru and premier cru beverage
pairings, German sparkling water.’’
The defunct street-art magazinewhen they fi rst met — at a focus
group for public transportation in
Tampa, Fla., in 2012. The age diff er-
ence between them was a problem
for her at fi rst. ‘‘I was like, immedi-
ately, ‘No,’ ’’ S. says. She had already
spent a decade trying to fi gure out
her life. There were years spent
working on behalf of tomato-farm
laborers in Florida, followed by a
stint as a union rep for janitors and
security guards at Harvard, in Mas-
sachusetts, then jobs as a pastry chef
in Boston and in Austin, Texas. By
2016, she was back in Tampa, her
hometown, working in kitchens,
still making pastries. She was, in C.’s
words, ‘‘this beautiful, smart woman
who’s about this community life.’’ A
few months after the focus group —
where, as it happened, they were the
only two participants who actually
used public transportation — she
messaged him on Facebook: ‘‘Hey,
question, you know anyone I could
cop some weed from?’’
She wanted to make some edi-
bles; he seemed like someone who
might be able to provide the key
ingredient. Though he was abstain-
ing at the time, worried about the
drug testing at his job at a mental
health organization, he had used
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