SCHENECTADY — The marijuana shop Donald Andrews Jr. opened two years ago on Union Street appeared to be a rousing success.
For months after its March 2023 launch, Upstate Canna Co. featured huge lines of customers waiting to buy from the only marijuana dispensary in the Capital Region. It was the first local pot shop in the region to open and maintained that monopoly for months while New York’s trouble-plagued rollout of marijuana retail shops moved at a plodding pace.
For Andrews, things are different these days. He is being held at the Albany County jail, waiting to start a prison sentence tied to the spectacular crash of his Tesla off an overpass above the Thruway last year that left him and several others badly injured…