SCHENECTADY — The Schenectady cannabis shop owner arrested on and charged with four felony counts for his alleged role in a Feb. 11 car crash near Crossgates Mall has become the public face of legal cannabis in Schenectady since his Upstate Canna Co. shop opened on upper Union Street last spring.
Don Andrews was arrested Thursday and charged with a count of aggravated vehicular assault, three counts of second-degree assault and one count of driving while ability impaired by the combined influence of drugs and alcohol, state police said.
He is charged in connection to the February crash near the Guilderland mall that saw Andrews’ Tesla careen through a Crossgates ramp overpass and land on Interstate 87 northbound, causing secondary crashes that resulted in several people suffering injuries, according to state police.
Andrews did not respond to a request for comment on Monday. His attorney Matthew Simone said on Monday that Andrews had pled not guilty to all charges, with Simone declining to comment further on the case.
Andrews, 35, opened Upstate Canna Co. in March 2023, with persistently long lines forming outside of the 1613 Union St. shop, which was the first to open in Schenectady.
Andrews, who was convicted on two marijuana-related offenses in the late 2000s, was awarded a license to operate a dispensary as part of the state Office of Cannabis Management’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program in November 2022, which gave a limited number of dispensary licenses to those previously convicted of a marijuana-related offenses.
He previously sold CBD products at his Schenectady shop before transitioning into cannabis sales. Andrews is also the proprietor of VapedCity Smokeshop in Scotia and Upstate CBD in Glenville.
Upstate Canna’s location on upper Union Street has also been criticized by city officials, including Mayor Gary McCarthy, who has said previously he would have liked to see the dispensary located elsewhere in the city. Complaints from neighboring business owners and residents about the lines of customers outside the shop led to the City Council exploring zoning restrictions on future cannabis dispensaries in the city.
Upstate Canna Co. is currently the only dispensary operating in Schenectady County, though city planners recently approved plans for a second operation along Crane Street.
Andrews, on Thursday morning and before his arrest, spoke to The Daily Gazette to discuss the amount of tax revenue his Union Street dispensary has netted the city of Schenectady since opening last April. State police did not announce Andrews was arrested until Monday morning.
Between April 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, Andrews’ dispensary brought in $709,639 in local tax revenue, with $532,229 going directly into the coffers of the Electric City. Schenectady County netted $177,409 from cannabis sales.
“It’s going well. We’ve been busy all the way through. … It’s just been great,” Andrews told a reporter Thursday.
Andrews also said he was looking at potentially opening a second dispensary somewhere in the Capital Region, though he did not provide additional details on those plans.
Andrews was the subject of a false drug sale accusation in 2013 related to his Dabb City Smoke Shop in Scotia. In that case, informant James Slater later pleaded guilty to a pair of felony counts for perjury after he admitted that he had lied to a Schenectady County grand jury by telling them Andrews had twice sold him drugs in March 2013.
Andrews was cleared after the shop’s surveillance camera system caught the undercover informant pulling drugs from his pants, which the informant then claimed that Andrews had sold him.
Andrews, a 2007 Schenectady High School graduate, subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Schenectady County Sheriff’s Department, Sheriff Dominic Dagostino, Deputy Eric Fluty and Slater in U.S. District Court in Albany. Andrews, who is Black, alleged that he was targeted by a Sheriff’s Department drug sting due to his race.
Latham attorney Kevin Luibrand, who represented Andrews in the suit, said on Monday that the 2014 lawsuit had been settled, with Andrews receiving a six-figure payment.