‘Cannabis Mayor Eric Adams’ gifted weed bag during first public visit to NYC pot shop – with no marijuana inside: ‘Oh, you need some?’

Mayor Eric Adams made his first public visit to a Big Apple pot shop and walked away with a free “weed bag” — but not the kind with marijuana in it.

Adams was gifted a customized leather tote bag branding him “The Cannabis Mayor Eric Adams” as he cut the ribbon at the grand opening of Matawana Dispensary in Park Slope — the city’s 36th legal marijuana store and the first owned by a black woman.

“What’s in it?” Adams said as he shook the empty bag, which was covered with images of marijuana buds.

“Oh, you need some?” owner Leeann Mata replied, before shouting back to a store worker.

“Yo – he needs some,” she said. “Hook him up!”

The grand opening comes amid a growing crisis of an estimated 1,500 stores selling pot without a license — and Adams called on Albany to give the power to the city to shut down the illegal shops.

“I think that many of the illegal (shops), they draw illegal behavior and illegal actions,” he said. “These legal shops, they bring a level of professionalism.They bring a level of what’s expected from the clientele that’s coming inside.

Adams said his message to New Yorkers was if “you’re going to patronize the industry, patronize the legal shops.”

“You’re not seeing that type of activity at the legal shops and that is why we continue to say to New Yorkers, you’re going to patronize the industry, patronize the legal shops.”

“But sometimes it’s difficult to distinguish between the two and that is why we need the local enforcement power in all the local municipalities,” the Mayor said. “We know which ones are illegal.”

The opening came a day after Gov. Kathy Hochul was joined by former weed criminals that have been elevated to cannabis licensees to slam social media companies and platforms like Google Maps for listing the unlicensed vendors and “sowing of a lot of confusion in the marketplace.”

The governor is pushing a proposal that would allow the NYC Sheriff’s Office and NYPD to shut down the illicit shops, which have been largely undeterred by fines that regulators have struggled to collect.

Adams meanwhile highlighted the opening as part of the government’s commitment to give “justice-impacted individuals” a stake in the burgeoning legal market..

Mata said she is a former public school teacher from East New York whose Trinidadian family members had been “justice-impacted” by the state’s cannabis prohibition before she became part of its budding legal economy.

“Draconian prohibition laws cost my family almost everything, but the plant itself is a healing herb,” said Mata.