Marijuana Bust Green-Lights Cannabis Shop for ‘Red Light Robin Hood’

Stephen Ruth’s path to becoming a licensed cannabis retailer began with a pair of handcuffs decades ago.

More than 40 years after being arrested on a marijuana charge at gunpoint by a Suffolk County detective, the longtime government activist has received a New York retail cannabis license—thanks in part to that very conviction.

The twist doesn’t end there.

The detective who arrested Ruth as a young man was Rob Trotta, who later became a Suffolk County legislator and eventually one of Ruth’s strongest allies in his years-long crusade against Suffolk’s controversial red-light camera program.

Ruth, widely known as the “Red Light Robin Hood” for cutting down and disabling red-light cameras he considered unconstitutional, is now preparing to open a cannabis dispensary called Weed the People on Kasper Court in East Setauket.

As a young man, Ruth pleaded guilty to misdemeanor marijuana possession and received three years’ probation after his arrest. Years later, when New York began expunging marijuana convictions, his attorney suggested clearing the offense from his record.

Ruth declined.

At the time, the conviction had no effect on his real estate broker’s license, and he saw little reason to erase it. That decision proved fortuitous.

When New York legalized recreational marijuana, the state created a licensing system that gave preference to applicants with prior marijuana convictions as part of its effort to address the unequal enforcement of former cannabis laws. Because Ruth had kept the conviction on his record, he was eligible to apply under the program.

His attorney later told him that had the conviction been expunged, there likely would have been no record of it, potentially eliminating that advantage.

Meanwhile, Trotta—the detective who had once arrested Ruth—became a county legislator and joined him in opposing Suffolk’s red-light cameras. The unlikely alliance helped fuel a campaign that ultimately led to County Executive Ed Romaine scrapping the program.

Today, Ruth is turning another page.

His family-owned dispensary, Weed the People, is under construction in a former warehouse that is being converted into retail space. The name is a play on the Constitution’s opening words, “We the People,” reflecting both Ruth’s political activism and the Revolutionary War heritage of the Setauket area.

For Ruth, the journey from marijuana defendant to licensed cannabis retailer has come full circle—an unlikely path shaped by a decades-old arrest, an old adversary who became an ally, and one of Long Island’s most unusual stories.