ALBANY – They once ran the marijuana trade in large swaths of the city.
And as New York prepares to allow recreational cannabis sales, members of the Robinson family want to be the first in the state to legally provide the product that landed several of them in federal prison.
Not second, not third, not down the line. First.
During a 90-minute interview earlier this year, several members of the Robinson family laid out why they should have that distinction, why they believe they were unfairly targeted by the city and law enforcement, and the impact the investigation had on their family.
They plan to be among the hundreds, if not thousands, of New Yorkers who will apply later this year for one of 100 or so conditional licenses to sell recreational cannabis under the state’s plan to give those with prior marijuana convictions the first crack at a potential multi-billion-dollar market.
“My feeling is we need to be the first in the state of New York,” said former city councilman Mark Robinson. “And, well, (to those who say) ‘Mr. Robinson, why would you say the first?’ … If you do your research, I don’t think there’s any other family in New York state that have been sent to prison for (low-level) marijuana sales. Because that’s all it was.”
The family’s story is more complicated than that.
For more than a decade beginning in the early 1990s,…
