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Happy weekend, everyone!
Between stories about medical reciprocity legislation, coverage of regulators and guest columns by experts, we covered a lot of ground – so let’s dive in and take a look at the articles we ran.
Yesterday, we covered the Cannabis Control Board meeting, at which regulators issued more than 100 of the state’s inaugural general cannabis business licenses.
The 109 licenses the CCB approved included 26 microbusinesses, 25 retail dispensaries, 24 cultivators, 13 provisional retail licenses, 12 processors and nine distributors. Before Friday, the only licensed operators held conditional licenses – aside from some medical cannabis Registered Organizations that expanded into adult-use.
We ran a story about a local controversy in the small Westchester County town of Pound Ridge, where some residents are demanding municipal officials bar cannabis retail within their borders – despite the fact that the deadline for cities and towns to opt out of adult-use retail was Dec. 31, 2021.
Pound Ridge Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan told NY Cannabis Insider that the Dec. 31, 2021, deadline for municipalities to opt out of cannabis retail came and went without incident. But after a prospective adult-use dispensary began renting space in the town’s business district, some residents started calling for a municipal ban on adult-use retail.
Rich Rainone, co-founder of Dazed Cannabis, did a Q&A with NY Cannabis Insider about how things are going at their Manhattan dispensary, Dazed Union Square. Dazed Cannabis owns two dispensaries in Massachusetts and the Union Square location is the company’s first in New York.
The shop operated as a popup until the business completed renovations on its permanent storefront in Union Square. Dazed held a grand opening celebration on Nov. 9, and has been operating from there since. Rainone answered questions about how business is going, what’s selling best and what the future for Dazed Union Square looks like.
We took a look at a pair of proposed laws making their way through New York’s state legislature; one that would allow out-of-state medical patients to buy at medical dispensaries in the Empire State, and another that would repeal the excise tax medical patients pay for their purchases.
Medical cannabis advocates say they believe the patient reciprocity bill is an important step in protecting the medical market, and industry players believe there’s a good chance lawmakers will pass it into law this session. However, stakeholders are less confident the bill to remove the excise tax will make it this session.
Ninety-nine days after state senators held a marathon hearing about problems with New York’s legal weed rollout, we checked in with lawmakers who were at that meeting to ask what actions they’ve since taken to address the issues identified in testimony that day.
Five senators sent us answers, and another three signed onto a Feb. 2 letter to CCB Chair Tremaine Wright, which notes their concerns with the current general license application process.
Ahead of Friday’s CCB meeting, Joe Rossi – the Cannabis Practice Group Leader at Park Strategies – wrote a guest column in which he encouraged New Yorkers who are upset with how the state’s legal cannabis rollout is going to speak out to regulators.
“I have been outspoken about this ‘disaster,’ and trust me, I am getting sick of myself too at this point,” Rossi wrote. “But why do I press on? Because good people across New York State who I have worked with over the last five years are apoplectic about this catastrophe, while also terrified to speak up out of fear of retaliation from the Office of Cannabis Management.”
Colin Decker, founder of 7 SEAZ and Sensei Growth Consulting, contributed a guest column, in which he gives advice to New York State’s cannabis growers for this upcoming season.
“I hope that farmers cultivating cannabis commercially here in New York State have learned from these past few seasons,” Decker wrote. “The first year of outdoor legal cultivation was beyond dry, with last season’s cultivation conditions being quite different due to the rains, heavy winds and other conditions we had to deal with.”
Continuing our “NY’s women in cannabis” series, we ran a profile on Katie Motta, CEO of Jade Stone Branding, a company that seeks to disrupt tradition within the cannabis industry by replacing archaic stereotypes with sophisticated and innovative designs.
We also added two new entries to our “People to know in NY cannabis” series: Brandon Carter, a new business owner whose dispensary is set to open on Feb. 29 in Long Island City; and Jonpaul Pezzo, owner and operator of NYC Bud, a retail cannabis dispensary located in the heart of Long Island City.
Lastly, we posted attorney Jeffrey Hoffman’s latest Ask Me Anything segment, in which he answered questions about the Long Island zoning rules, Gov. Hochul’s criticism of regulators and more.
Have a great weekend everyone, we’ll be back with plenty more next week.