New Jersey Black-owned weed store, Simply Pure Trenton, opening soon - The Philadelphia Inquirer

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As a college student at Howard University in 2005, Tahir Johnson decided to go to the beach. He put on his pink polo shirt, packed up his decked-out red Lexus, grabbed his youngest brother and little cousin, and set off for Ocean City, Md.

But rather than a day in the sand, Johnson got pulled over due to a broken taillight — one traffic stop of what he estimates to be about 100 in his life. The officer told Johnson, who is Black, that he looked like a drug dealer. Johnson told the officer he had weed in his trunk. The police found it, and arrested him. He was convicted on a possession charge, and would later be arrested two more times for marijuana.

His marijuana-related arrests and conviction have since been expunged. But Johnson’s legal issues never scared him away from cannabis.

Now, Johnson, 39, is preparing to open Simply Pure Trenton in Ewing Township, N.J., his hometown. The shop will make Johnson one of the first Black recreational dispensary owners in New Jersey, and one of the state’s first operating owners with a cannabis-related conviction. Simply Pure Trenton is tentatively set to open in July.

“I always said I would never go back to Trenton unless I could be the mayor or something. Something impactful,” Johnson said. “Who ever would have thought it would be weed?”

Selling weed legally back home is a far cry from where Johnson expected to be. When he left for college, his parents encouraged him not to return to Ewing to avoid trouble — especially from the authorities.

In Mercer County, which includes Trenton and Ewing, police arrested Black people for marijuana at a rate 4.1 times higher than white people between 2010 and 2018, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. And New Jersey’s prison population has the highest racial disparity in the country, with Black people being incarcerated at a rate 12.5 times higher than whites, a 2021 report from the Sentencing Project found.

Discrimination, especially in enforcing marijuana laws, was “egregious” in Trenton, Johnson said. “If you’re unlucky enough to have even a seed or a roach, your whole life is ruined.”

From banker to budtender

A common criticism of the legal marijuana industry is that while Black people have been disproportionately targeted for cannabis offenses, white business owners are benefiting from legalization. New Jersey’s marijuana legalization laws have attempted to address that impact: The state’s Cannabis Regulatory Commission gives priority to applicants with cannabis-related convictions, as well as those who come from communities inordinately harmed by the war on drugs, such as Trenton and Ewing.

But Johnson’s path wasn’t straightforward. Before entering the cannabis market, he worked in banking and finance, landing a job at Morgan Stanley despite his record.

“[My manager] was like, ‘You have this on your record. You’ve got to promise me that nothing like this is going to happen again,’ ” Johnson said. “That changed my life.”

By 2016, he was working at SunTrust Financial Services, where he said he collected a six-figure salary as a financial adviser. Then, he became inspired by Hope Wiseman, a former investment banker who became the nation’s youngest Black woman to own a marijuana dispensary in Maryland.

So, he broke into the legal weed industry as a budtender.

Making $15 an hour.

It started as a part-time gig, but soon, he went full-time doling out weed at a Maryland medical marijuana dispensary. The move was a financial sacrifice for Johnson, who has three daughters, ages 9, 5, and 1. It also caused friction in his relationship with his former long-term partner.

“That was tough,” Johnson said. “I got kids in private school, I got a mortgage, I got all that stuff. It was a big risk.”

It was also a turning point.

Johnson partnered with the dispensary owners in an unsuccessful attempt to get marijuana business licenses for ventures in Maryland and New Jersey, and discovered advocacy work. He became an important player in the marijuana industry thanks to his roles at organizations including the National Cannabis Industry Association, U.S. Cannabis Council, and the Marijuana Policy Project, where he focused on diversity, social equity, and inclusion efforts.

“I saw a real need for, and lack of, diversity in the industry,” Johnson said. “Here I was, traveling the country, and everywhere I go, I’m like the only Black person there.”

Ultimately, he met Wanda James, who became the first Black person to own a legal U.S. cannabis dispensary in Colorado in 2009. Johnson is licensing James’ Simply Pure brand to start Simply Pure Trenton.

The idea with Simply Pure Trenton, Johnson said, is to provide an upscale experience while targeting traditional marijuana consumers — something he says is missing from New Jersey’s legal market. He even has a robot, Pepper, to help customers.

Weed and Wall Street experience

New Jersey has seen high interest in the legal weed industry from diversely owned and social-equity businesses: As of May, 67% of new adult-use licenses had gone to businesses owned by Black entrepreneurs, women, and other underrepresented groups.

But despite those numbers, few Black-owned or social-equity businesses have actually opened. New Jersey went its entire first year of legalization without a Black-owned recreational marijuana dispensary operating. That only changed on May 6, when Atco’s Holistic Solutions, owned by Suzan Nickelson, began recreational sales.

In part, the lack of operating marijuana businesses owned by underrepresented groups comes down to funding, Nickelson said. Because marijuana is federally illegal, business owners often can’t get loans and must find investors to provide start-up money. That can lead to predatory situations in which investors lend money under terms that cause the operators to lose control of the business.

“There is a crisis regarding capital access, and in that, minority operators are the most harmed,” Nickelson said. New Jersey has attempted to address this with a pilot grant program that will provide a total $10 million in state funding to developing marijuana start-ups.

Compounding the issue is the lack of available real estate, said Todd Johnson, executive director of the New Jersey Cannabis Trade Association. An estimated 70% of New Jersey municipalities have opted out of allowing marijuana businesses. That leaves nearly 2,000 applicants hoping to set up shop in about 170 towns.

Because of his work in finance, Tahir Johnson was better positioned to be successful in New Jersey’s cannabis industry than most. He said the mentorship he received informed his approach to funding his marijuana business.

“I don’t know how many people in the world had this background with weed and Wall Street experience,” he said.

That experience culminated in March, when he submitted his adult-use retail application alongside lifelong friend John Dockery, who also partnered with Simply Pure to open a location, Simply Pure Downtown Trenton, with which Johnson is not involved. In April, they received their annual licenses, which allow them to open. Once they do, they’ll be doing business down the street from one another.

Johnson’s shop, he hopes, will be a source of pride for the Trenton area.

“It’s the type of place where people don’t always put nice things, or the best things,” he said. “ ‘Trenton makes, the world takes.’ It makes me proud to make that mean something again.”

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