New York’s Marijuana Sales Chances Of Success Are Up In The Smoke!

Before the year is over, we anticipate that 20 dispensaries will be up and running. In October, Governor Hochul bragged, “And then every month or so, another 20.” This means that we won’t be rushing the product to market. It’s going to be effective and fruitful.

Now in February of the following year, there are just two legal pot stores in all of New York City, and they’re both located within a half mile of each other in the Village. Despite hundreds of illegal sellers operating outside of what Mayor Adams optimistically predicted would be as much as a $1.3 billion licensed marijuana marketplace this year.

Hochul Bragged has not “just jammed it out there.” This market is meant to compensate those who suffered as a result of the long, shameful criminal war on weed. Instead of rewarding “justice-involved” suckers who filled out tedious applications and are waiting in line for the licenses, leases, and operating loans the state promised to supply for “the most equitable and inclusive cannabis industry in the nation,”.

The market is rewarding anyone with the cash and chutzpah to ignore the new rules and just open a shop. Mayor Eric Adams, speaking in May of last year about the city’s ever-increasing number of illicit sellers, said, “There needs to be a system of not heavy-handedness, but going in and explaining to that store that, ‘Listen, you can’t do this,’ give them a warning.”

In this town, we will not turn a blind eye to wrongdoing or disregard the law. That’s completely unacceptable. Adams made a big deal in November about forming a task force to crack down on illegal sales, but all that bluster and toughness were vaporized when his administration wrote a letter to the City Council concerning the task force.

The task force, led by the sheriff’s office and including the NYPD and the state Office of Cannabis Management, conducted 53 raids in less than two weeks before slowing to less than one a day after Adams got to hold a press conference to boast about the task force’s work seizing “more than 100,000 illegal products” he said were worth more than $4 million.

However, the letter reveals what Adams has been trying to hide: that the majority of the “illegal products” were untaxed cigarettes, not marijuana; that the task force has not shut down a single business (rather, “all locations are able to re-open as soon as our inspection is completed”); and that it has not pursued any forfeiture actions against the property or cash proceeds of businesses making illegal pot sales.

Out of the initial 53 establishments raided, the task force returned to two, and “both were selling various contraband including illegal cannabis” once more. After all, it makes sense that they would. Since no one is being punished for breaking the law, even the slight possibility of stock loss is worth it if it means undercutting legal businesses that are complying with the new pot tax and other regulations.

The disconnect between Adams’ words and actions may be to blame for the first-ever low approval rating recorded for him in a poll released on Wednesday. Nearly two-thirds of voters (66%) cited crime as a very serious worry, the highest percentage since Quinnipiac began polling on the topic in 1999.

Of those polled, 41% cited crime as the most pressing problem confronting New York City today. Sixty-four percent of voters stated they are either extremely (37%) or somewhat (27%) dissatisfied with the city’s current trajectory, and 57% disapproved of the mayor’s handling of crime after being elected on a pledge to fairly restore public safety.

Despite Adams’s claims that “his” NYPD had improved public safety by the end of 2022, only 8% of voters reported feeling safer as a result. Even though 69% of voters approve of legal pot sales, 44% or 25% say it’s a very serious problem “that there are shops in New York City selling unlicensed marijuana products,” highlighting the gap between rhetoric and reality.

similar to the costly subway announcements about how “there are NYPD officers in this station if you need their assistance” (not to mention checking their phones). This city is “not going to be a community where we openly snub our noses and flout the law,” but the mayor and governor wish there was more they could do to make sure the new market “is going to operate and be successful.”