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Earlier this week, a New York State Supreme Court judge issued a restraining order against the state’s Cannabis Control Board and Office of Cannabis Management, barring them from issuing any new Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses, and stopping dispensaries that were already issued licenses from receiving operational approval.
For Korey Rowe, a disabled vet whose retail cannabis dispensary is set to open Saturday in Oneonta — the first in the Mohawk Valley — the chaos that’s enveloped the state is no big surprise.
The interior of Dosha, a cannabis dispensary in Oneonta, NY. (Courtesy, Korey Rowe)
“You could see it coming,” Rowe said, referring to the lawsuit filed against OCM by disabled veterans who claim that they’ve been ignored during the conditional cannabis licensing process.
“I sympathize with them,” Rowe said. “In fact, if my store wasn’t opening, I’d be on that lawsuit with them.”
However, it’s not only disabled vets who are getting the short end of the stick, Rowe said.
What about the “disadvantaged farmers, women and the minority-owned businesses” that were supposed to get a leg up before the MSOs (multistate operators) are allowed in, he asked.
“It just hasn’t happened for them,” he said, adding that in some areas “the heavy hitters are already here.”
Even though his own CAURD license was issued based on his past marijuana conviction, Rowe said, “For every day that passes, it’s got to be extremely frustrating” for vets looking to get a cannabis license who end up at the back of the line.
Up the road from Oneonta, veteran Mark Byassee has plans to open a retail dispensary in Victor, NY, just outside of Rochester, which could be impacted by the outcome of the vets’ lawsuit.
With an eye on the court case, Byassee says he’s proceeding with plans to transform an historic train station (for the Lehigh Valley railway) into what would be the first retail cannabis dispensary in the Finger Lakes region.
But, at the same time, he supports the legal action taken by his fellow vets.
“Ever since the state created this pecking order to give the social equity groups a leg up, they ended up just making one group mad at another (social equity) group,” Byassee said.
While he said he understands the OCM’s “good intentions,” all the delays are “costing the State of New York a lot of money.”
And it won’t be just the state that loses out if the court case lingers for weeks or months on end, says Osbert Orduña, a disabled vet and CEO of The Cannabis Place.
“I’m all for letting (the court case) play out, but I’m 100% against the injunction, and if it is not lifted,” and lingers for weeks or months to come, it could be “counterproductive” for all the players in the nascent cannabis space, Orduña said.
Or, if the judge rules that the state has to rewrite the rules and regulations, that would open the door to the MSOs to swoop in come December and “strangle” the independents, added Orduña, a service-disabled Marine who served as a Platoon Sergeant for a biological chemical team during the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
For The Cannabis Place, which operates a cannabis delivery service in the metropolitan New York area and has a storefront under construction in Queens that is set to open at the end of September, the ramifications could be significant.
It could “potentially mean we would have to suspend our buildout – and the 35 people who have been offered employment with us” would be out of work, Orduña said.