When 29-year-old Jeremy Rivera stood before a judge in Queens County Court on Aug. 8, 2016, he was sentenced to two years in Gouverneur Correctional Facility in Upstate New York for a non-violent crime: possession of a controlled substance in the third degree.
Prior to his arrest, Rivera was in possession of marijuana or cannabis, something that wouldn’t become legal in New York until several years later and something that remains a hot-button issue today.
Rivera, now a three-time felon from various past drug charges, went off to prison to serve his sentence and looked to the future, not knowing then that his conviction would be the key to his future success.
Almost seven years later, Rivera, 36, is now a justice-involved and Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensaries (CAURD) provisional license awardee from the New York State Office of Cannabis Management. Next month, Rivera plans to open Terp Bros, his own marijuana dispensary, on Ditmars Boulevard in Astoria, something he never imagined doing just a few years ago when he came home from prison.
“I wasn’t trying to get into the industry,” Rivera said. “I had no intention, being a three-time felon, ever getting back into selling a controlled substance.”
That all changed one day when Rivera, now an Ozone Park resident, reconnected with an old friend while walking down the street near his house. After serving his sentence, Rivera found success in construction, becoming an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) instructor and starting his own consulting business.
Both Rivera’s checkered past and post-incarceration success caught his friend’s attention, prompting him to tell Rivera about the CAURD licensing program and how applicants needed both a cannabis-related offense that occurred prior to the passage of the Marijuana Regulation and Tax Act (MRTA) in March 2021 and business ownership experience in New York in order to qualify. Rivera was skeptical.
“I didn’t honestly…
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