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New York City’s First Cannabis Boss

Wants to Combat ‘Cannaphobia’
Dasheeda Dawson, a native New Yorker, returns home to direct
the effort to build cannabis businesses and to absorb the illegal
market into the new legitimate one.

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Dasheeda Dawson grew up in Brooklyn at the height of the war on drugs. Nate Palmer
for The New York Times

By Ashley Southall

Oct. 12, 2022

As a child growing up in East New York, Brooklyn, at the height of

the war on drugs, Dasheeda Dawson became convinced that she
wanted nothing to do with weed.

She was 10 when transit police officers began searching her

backpack for drugs while she was on her way to school, Ms.
Dawson said in an interview. As a teenager, she said she saw
officers slam her friends to the ground over small amounts of
cannabis.

She changed course completely in 2016 after the sudden death of

her mother, a longtime cannabis user who had encouraged her to
try the drug to treat health issues that left Ms. Dawson tired and in
pain. Ms. Dawson left a corporate career and dove into the
cannabis industry, enrolling first in a medical marijuana program
in Arizona before eventually overseeing the industry in Portland,
Ore., which included medicinal and recreational use.

Now, Ms. Dawson, 43, has returned home to lead Cannabis NYC ,
the city’s effort to support entrepreneurs and workers seeking
entry into the sector. As the founding director, she will head a small
team charged with corralling city services to help build sustainable
cannabis businesses, including helping entrepreneurs to apply for
licenses, access financing opportunities and navigate municipal
regulations.

Ms. Dawson said she is eager to put all her experience to work for
her home city. “To come back and lead the industry is just a full
circle moment for me,” she said.

Ms. Dawson, a Princeton University graduate and former

executive of Fortune 500 companies, has become a fierce advocate
for the legalization of marijuana with a focus on using it to address
health disparities and repair the damage to people and
neighborhoods that were subjected to mass criminalization. After
leaving corporate America, she crisscrossed the country as a Editors’ Picks

consultant advising cannabis businesses and lawmakers

considering legalization, including in New York . Queen’s Unearthed
Lament, and 6 More
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Her role as New York City’s first cannabis director is key to
fulfilling a central goal of legalization in the state: absorbing the How a Tiny British
Publisher Became
illicit market with persuasion and incentives instead of the Home of Nobel
punishment. Laureates

“We knew we needed to fill this role with someone who was an From the Depths of
Space to the Walls
expert at everything from the needs of entrepreneurs in this space of a Gallery
to the lived experience of New Yorkers harmed by the ‘War on
Drugs,’” Mayor Eric Adams, who appointed Ms. Dawson, said in a
statement.

It is a task imbued with historical weight. In 1973, New York was

the first state to enact laws prescribing tough penalties for petty
drug offenses, including the possession or sale of small amounts of
cannabis. Enforcement was heaviest in New York City, where
heavy-handed policing fueled arrests concentrated in mostly poor,
Black and brown neighborhoods.

The so-called Rockefeller drug laws, named after then-Gov. Nelson

Rockefeller, have been dismantled and replaced with addiction
treatment and criminal diversion programs, and marijuana arrests
have become rare in the city. But distrust in government remains
high.

More About Cannabis

With recreational marijuana becoming legal in several states, cannabis
products are becoming more easily available and increasingly varied.

Marijuana Pardons: President Biden pardoned thousands of people

convicted of marijuana possession under federal law and said his
administration would review how the drug is legally categorized.
Use on the Rise: Federal survey data on substance use shows the growing
mainstream acceptance of cannabis and hallucinogenic compounds
among young adults.
Tribal Pot Shops Thrive : New York State, which legalized recreational
marijuana last year, is only now about to start reviewing applications for
retail licenses . Many tribes in the state decided not to wait, and have
opened more than 100 dispensaries on Native land .

CBD and Insomnia: The research on this cannabis compound is sparse,

but some experts argue that there are ways it could indirectly soothe you
to sleep .

Part of Ms. Dawson’s job will be figuring out how to bridge that
divide. Lauren Rudick, a cannabis lawyer at the firm Hiller PC,
said the role will require a lot of listening, compromise and
flexibility from Ms. Dawson, who will need to work with a wide
variety of interest groups, including the powerful real estate lobby,
to be successful.

“I haven’t seen a track record of her collaborating with so many

different types of stakeholders, but there’s no question that she has
been so successful in mobilizing the equity conversation,” she said.

Cannabis plants on an upstate farm destined for retail dispensaries in New

York. Adrianna Newell for The New York Times

Ms. Dawson, the second of four sisters, excelled at school and was
admitted to Princeton, where she studied molecular biology before
earning a master’s degree in business administration from Rutgers
University in 2011. She later held corporate management roles at
Target and L Brands, the parent company of Victoria’s Secret.

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She started using cannabis a few years after the birth of her son,
Jordan Harmon, now 19, to treat symptoms of fatigue and pain that
doctors later realized stemmed from an autoimmune disorder.

Ms. Dawson said she was fearful that using cannabis could derail
her career. She kept it a secret until her mother died unexpectedly
in 2016 from liver cancer. Her mother, a housing activist who
regularly smoked with her friends, used cannabis to alleviate the
side effects of chemotherapy.

Ms. Dawson, who had been on a path to becoming a corporate vice

president, then reassessed her life, she said. “When my mom died,
I think it was just not enough,” Ms. Dawson said.

In Arizona, where there was a medical marijuana program, she

found relief and a calling. She branded herself as “ the Weedhead ”
and wrote a self-published workbook for entrepreneurs while also
consulting for businesses, government bodies and advocacy
groups.

In 2020, she took the job in Portland, becoming deputy director of

community and civic life and overseeing cannabis licensing, a
community reinvestment grant program and an emergency
financial relief fund for businesses.

In Portland, a liberal bastion that is one of the whitest major cities

in America, the legal cannabis industry had been set up before her
arrival. In her home city, Ms. Dawson will start from scratch with a
much more racially and politically diverse constituency, in a place
where the illicit market is more sophisticated and entrenched.

Despite the differences, she said some initiatives she spearheaded

in Portland are relevant to her new job, like the relief fund, which
became a lifeline for cannabis businesses during the pandemic. Her
office also created a Cannabis Empowerment Day to show support
for the legal industry and combat what she called persistent
“cannaphobia.”

Dawson began using cannabis to alleviate symptoms of

fatigue and pain that set in after the birth of her son. Nate
Palmer for The New York Times

Her new role, she said, is “my opportunity to come home and make
good, finally, on the things that I’ve been working on for the last
almost seven years.”

Jesse Campoamor, a consultant who served as an adviser to former

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo during the legalization debate, said Ms.
Dawson’s experience with cannabis is an advantage for the city.

“She’s taking a running start into an industry where the

conventional bureaucrat would need a bunch of primers and need a
lot more time just to get themselves up to speed,” he said. “And I
think that just puts us in a better position overall.”

When Ms. Dawson was born in 1979, 85 percent of the state prison
population was from East New York and six other neighborhoods,
where they were largely arrested on drug-related crimes,
according to a landmark study .

Even after the state’s harsh sentencing laws were dismantled, East
New York still had higher arrest rates for marijuana possession
than all but one other neighborhood between 2010 and 2017,
according to the city comptroller .

Enforcement was most intense in the city’s housing developments.

Bishop Mitchell G. Taylor, a pastor in Queens who runs Urban

Upbound, a nonprofit that works to create opportunities for
residents of the Queensbridge Houses, said the city needs to make
sure programs are available for NYCHA residents to obtain the
skills to enter the cannabis work force.

“That’s really all she can do, and that’s a lot,” he said.

Those who have previously worked with Ms. Dawson expressed

confidence in her ability to handle the challenge.

Chris Alexander, the executive director of the state Office of

Cannabis Management and the lead writer of the cannabis
legalization bill, said that Ms. Dawson’s experience as a patient, an
activist and a regulator, coupled with her scientific knowledge,
made her an effective advocate for legalization.

“The fact that she’ll be supporting us at a municipal level is very

comforting to me,” he said.

Ms. Dawson said her work boils down to helping people in the
communities like the one where she grew up benefit from
legalization.

“It is real trauma that I’m looking to repair for myself and a lot of
people,” Ms. Dawson said. “I’m looking to demonstrate that New
York State has the capability to get it done.”

Ashley Southall is a law enforcement reporter focused on crime and policing in New York
City. @ AshleyatTimes

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