The writer, Sarah Gojecki, reflects on her experience researching and writing about the emerging recreational marijuana market in New York for a university class in 2015. She faced challenges in selecting her topic and finding credible sources due to the limited market and federal restrictions. Despite these hurdles, the process deepened her understanding of entrepreneurship and the dynamics of contemporary market shifts.

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Comments by Sarah Gojecki, writer of part of the paper “The Green Rush”.
Writing “The Green Rush” paper throughout the 2015 winter semester for the BMG
320 class at Bishop’s Univeristy has been an enriching experience.
The first challenge I faced was the choice of our topic. Back in September 2014, I had
read an article by Matt Ferner on huffingtonpost.com called “New York Could Legalize
Recreational Marijuana In 2015”. I was thrilled by the opportunity to study a current market
shift however I was worried the topic would be inappropriate. Nonetheless, Steven
Karpenko was enthusiastic and supportive of the idea. Therefore I started my research on
the opportunity recognition of the recreational marijuana emerging market of the New York
State.
I decided to include researches concerning the social behavior associated with
marijuana recreational consumers in order to provide the reader with a better
understanding of the market’s customers. It was important to me to provide the reader with
basic information about the market’s customers and effects of marijuana consumption.
Moreover, an additional part had to be included in order to question society’s view on
marijuana consumption. A comparison to alcohol seemed most accurate to do so.
Recreational marijuana emerging market was different from what I expected. Limited
by the federal legalization, I was surprised to see how limited the current market was due to
the barrier to a national reach.
Concerning the research method, it was essential for me to use the most legitimate,
accurate and up-to-date sources. However, I have encountered a lot of problems with

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determining the legitimacy of certain websites using terms such as ‘dope’ or ‘shit’. I only
used the information from official sources in order to be as accurate as possible.
Although writing on a current subject was a characteristic that pleased me, it
provided an additional problem when doing the research. I had to face a lack of studies
available on the specific New York recreational marijuana market. Therefore I derived the
predictions myself based on the available data and few scholars to back me up.
Overall, the experience of writing on a current entrepreneurship topic allowed me to
value the research process as an entrepreneur. Both from the in-class presentations and
personal researches, the ‘hottest’ entrepreneur topics studied provided me with great
knowledge of a wide range of current entrepreneurship issues, opportunities and resources.