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When Carmine Fiore filed suit against New York cannabis regulators in August asking for an injunction on the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program, the 38-year-old service-disabled veteran felt like it was his last option.
“I tried speaking to legislators about veterans not being prioritized in the licensing, and it fell on deaf ears,” Fiore told NY Cannabis Insider in an exclusive interview. “I felt like I was backed into a corner.”
Fiore’s lawsuit, joined by service-disabled veterans William Norgard, Steve Mejia and Dominic Spaccio, argued that the Cannabis Control Board and Office of Cannabis Management violated the New York State Constitution’s separation of powers clause when they created the CAURD program. Their litigation resulted in a court injunction on Aug. 7 that prevented over 400 CAURD licensees from opening their stores.
Fiore said they asked for the injunction because, even after the Coalition for Access to Regulated & Safe Cannabis had sued the state in March, arguing that CAURD violated the MRTA and New York’s state constitution, the OCM continued expanding the program, adding hundreds of licenses. The Coalition later joined Fiore’s suit as plaintiffs.
The OCM “obviously didn’t care or fear any lawsuits, so unfortunately an injunction was the only way to get their attention to this matter,” Fiore said
The group eventually settled with the state, and a judge lifted the injunction on Dec. 1.
Some in New York’s cannabis industry have expressed anger toward Fiore and co-plaintiffs, while others say the group was right to sue, and any blame should rest with the OCM for promulgating policy improperly.
Following the settlement and resumption of the CAURD program, Fiore told NY Cannabis Insider that he believes veterans would have been ignored if not for the litigation. Among other service-disabled veterans in the state’s weed industry, opinion is split.
Additionally, many have questioned whether Fiore and his veteran co-plaintiffs paid lawyer fees to file and argue the lawsuit, with some suggesting their bills were paid by the Coalition – which consists of Curaleaf, PharmaCann (dba Verilife), Fiorello Pharmaceuticals (dba FP Wellness or Rise), NYCANNA (dba the Botanist or Acreage NY), and Citiva Medical (dba Be.).
Fiore declined to give details about who paid for the lawsuit.
“There are four plaintiffs with four different revenues, and everything was private financial information that I can’t disclose,” Fiore said.
The group decided to file the lawsuit after it became clear to them that state regulators and legislators weren’t willing to prioritize veterans as promised in the MRTA, Fiore said. He and other veterans had advocated for things like veteran representation at the OCM and on the Cannabis Advisory Board – which doesn’t have a veteran among its 13 members – since 2021, he said.
But over two years, they received nothing but nonmaterial assurances.
As part of the settlement, the OCM agreed to take several steps to support service-disabled veterans entering New York’s cannabis industry, including:
- Establishing a taskforce for businesses owned by service-disabled veterans, and committing at least one OCM full-time employee to specialize in business development for those veterans.
- Creating an educational campaign for service-disabled veterans who are interested in getting into the adult-use or medical markets.
- Developing a program to expand cannabis research into factors related to veterans’ health.
- Providing monthly updates to the plaintiffs on the progress of these efforts until they have been officially launched.
Fiore said he believes regulators wouldn’t have initiated these measures if not for the lawsuit. But that’s not a uniform opinion among his industry colleagues.
Osbert Orduña, CEO of The Cannabis Place in Queens – which currently delivers weed and is planning on opening a brick-and-mortar location – said that all of these pro-veteran initiatives were already in the works before Fiore and others filed suit.
“A lot of the things that are written into the settlement, those are things that have been in the works, or have existed already,” Orduña said.
Additionally, Orduña said the injunction did incalculable damage to hundreds of licensed businesses, which are owned by people who’d been disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs. And it froze hiring and harmed ancillary businesses, he said.
“It’s something where I don’t think we’ll even be able to gather and fathom the damage that was done by this injunction until months or years down the line,” said Orduña, who is also a service-disabled veteran.
Orduña also noted that while the plaintiffs – including members of the Coalition – received expedited licensing as part of the settlement, if they hadn’t sued, all four veterans would have been able to apply for licenses when general applications opened on Oct. 4, and likely would have received them.
The real winners of the settlement, he said, are the large companies in the Coalition.
The Fiore settlement also requires the CCB to give licenses (as long as certain requirements are met) to all five Registered Organization plaintiffs, who are applying to expand into the adult-use retail market. Regulators will authorize these companies, once licensed, to open their first co-located adult-use dispensary by Dec. 29, 2023, and their second and third co-located shops by June 29, 2024.
The agreement means these companies will likely have operational adult-use dispensaries sooner than most CAURD licensees.
“All this lawsuit did was to delay the rollout of the CAURD businesses that had received licenses, and when you look at that, I ask: who gains the most from this lawsuit? It’s not the service-disabled veteran community,” Orduña said.
Other service-disabled veterans in New York’s cannabis industry aren’t so confident that state regulators were going to provide any of the pro-veteran elements of the settlements if Fiore and co-plaintiffs hadn’t sued.
Sarah Stenuf, a service-disabled veteran who owns licensed cannabis cultivator Ananda Farms, said that she’d also met with regulators to advocate for veteran representation and services since the MRTA passed in 2021. In those meetings, OCM and CCB officials agreed that veterans had been overlooked – despite the MRTA explicitly including them as a social equity category – but they only offered open-ended promises with no follow through, Stenuf said.
“I think the lawsuit was a long time coming,” she said. “I wish it wasn’t needed, but it was imperative.”
Other veterans in cannabis had been mulling a lawsuit over CAURD for a while because they believed the program was illegal, Stenuf said. Even though the MRTA identifies service-disabled veterans as a priority category, many couldn’t get CAURD licenses because they didn’t meet all of the program’s requirements.
It felt like regulators and legislators were willing to invoke veterans when they wanted to promote bills and initiatives, but then overlooked them when it came to providing them with any material benefits, Stenuf said.
Stenuf and other veterans initially decided not to sue over the CAURD program because the state had already issued licenses, and people were already planning and spending money on their businesses, she said. While Stenuf didn’t know Fiore and co-plaintiffs were planning a lawsuit until it was filed, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that they sued.
“We’re two years in, and … nothing on paper, nothing solid” for veterans, Stenuf said. “Emails, yes; and we’ve been getting these emails and promises for two years.”
In addition to the damage the nearly four-month-long injunction did to CAURD licensees who couldn’t open their stores, Orduña said he takes issue with media appearances Fiore made leading up to the lawsuit, which cast a negative light on CAURD licensees.
Specifically, an April story in the New York Post, entitled “NY favors felons, snubs disabled veterans in awarding of pot licenses: critics,” created the impression that CAURD licensees are serious criminals, when most were arrested and charged with minor cannabis crimes, like simple possession.
“The framing of the narrative was disingenuous, and it was purposely done to cast a negative light on people,” Orduña said.
Now that the injunction is lifted, Orduña is ready to resume construction on The Cannabis Place’s brick-and-mortar shop in Queens, he said.
With the lawsuit behind him, and a social equity retail license in-hand, Fiore is also ready to get to work on his retail shop. He said he is currently scouting locations across the state and wants to get his dispensary operational as soon as possible.
Fiore knows that some within New York’s cannabis industry are upset with him, but he doesn’t think it will harm his business prospects, considering the number of supporters who reached out with supportive messages during the course of the case, he said. These included prospective cannabis licensees who are in social equity categories but didn’t meet the qualifications for CAURD.
And while he understands CAURD licensees’ frustration, he said he hopes they understand his position.
“This was never meant to hurt anyone, but unfortunately the actions of the OCM caused this,” Fiore said. “You can’t blame somebody for holding the state accountable for their actions, because God knows that the state would hold us accountable for ours.”