Dustin Robinson says he waited too long to do psychedelic drugs. He’s 36 and it happened just a year ago.
“It really changed my perspective,” Robinson says. “Having that experience really showed me how I had been brainwashed into thinking it was something it really wasn’t.”
What it was, Robinson says, was a moment of clarity when he knew his path was to help make psychedelics and cannabis legal.
Robinson now runs a South Florida-based law firm called Mr. Cannabis Law. Operating in four states, the firm is dedicated to make cannabis and psychedelics more legally available and to help companies in those industries get established.
It’s not a path Robinson would’ve imagined for himself. Growing up in Hallandale Beach, Robinson was an athlete and had plans to follow his father and become a doctor, but at University of Florida he switched paths and ended up becoming a CPA. He did that for a year before going back to UF for law school, landing a big firm job afterward. He left the firm after three years and spent nearly five years as CFO and general counsel for a manufacturing company.
After realizing only a few big firms in the state did work in cannabis law, he went out on his own in 2017. Florida’s medical marijuana law was three years old, and Robinson says companies needed good legal counsel on how to establish in the state. From the beginning, he says, the career move never came from his own desire to smoke weed, something he does only sparingly. “If you had told me 10 years ago I would be working in the cannabis and psychedelic space, I would’ve told you you’re crazy,” he says.
His firm works with startups, setting up corporate structuring, obtaining licenses and making sure they comply with Florida’s intricate cannabis laws. Companies that sell pot here, for instance, have to be fully integrated, meaning they sell it, transport it, and have their own retail operations — not an easy thing for a startup.
Robinson imagines cannabis and even psychedelic industries will be recreationally legal at the federal and state level in the future.
In response in part to lobbying from Robinson, Boca lifted its ban on medical marijuana dispensaries in February 2020 and several will likely open in coming years. The demand here is likely to increase especially as retirees, who currently make up one in five medicinal marijuana users, discover the benefits, like decreased pain relief, Robinson says.
“If you look at the demographics of people with medical marijuana cards, there are a lot of people in the older generation,” Robinson says. “A lot of elderly people are starting to recognize that this will help with pain or other ailments as they get older.”