Looking for job? Cannabis industry going on a hiring high in NY

The creation of new jobs would be a boon for New York City, which has lagged behind the rest of the country in recovering employment lost during the pandemic

The first time Kirk Lawrence got a job selling weed, it was in the 1990s at a record store in Far Rockaway, Queens, where he had to be discreet. In the years that followed, he was arrested over and over, feeling the consequences of police crackdowns on marijuana users.

There were rides in police vans, lockups “for smoking outside my job,” Lawrence, now 45, said. But last month, he landed a job as a budtender, entering a new world where he now sells cannabis in the open at a Manhattan dispensary. “When this came up, I was like, why not?” he