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New York’s Cannabis Control Board will meet this week – potentially to license a large cohort of applicants – but cultivators who first established the state’s legal marijuana supply chain say they haven’t been able to get straight answers from regulators about the status of their licenses, leading to frustration and fear about their financial futures.
When state legislators and Gov. Kathy Hochul created the Adult-Use Conditional Cultivator license by statute, the licenses originally expired in June of 2023. Last year, lawmakers extended that by one year, and many of those AUCCs are currently applying for permanent licenses.
However, several AUCCs have told NY Cannabis Insider that Office of Cannabis Management staffers assured them that they’d quickly receive transitional licenses, and that they could operate under their current licensing standards until December if they receive OCM approval.
These growers say the OCM hasn’t lived up to their commitment to quickly license transitional applications and is not providing clear answers to AUCC licensees seeking approval to operate past June.
“It’s ridiculously bleak,” said Aaron Leentjes, co-founder and owner of AUCC-licensed cultivation company UNIFI Cannabis. AUCCs have been “abused by the system for two years,” he said.
As the first legal weed businesses in the state, AUCCs may have endured the most prolific sequence of setbacks. The CCB issued New York’s first marijuana cultivation licenses in April of 2022, but a slower than promised retail rollout in 2023 left most of those farmers sitting on thousands of pounds of product with nowhere to sell it.
In state budget discussions, lawmakers floated a $128 million financial relief package for struggling cannabis farmers, but legislators who supported the relief fund recently announced that it won’t be included in the state budget.
Now, cultivators are grappling with a serious situation: their licenses are set to expire within the next eight weeks, regulators are not responding to their requests to extend them, and their applications for permanent licenses are being reviewed via the same queue as new applicants.
“We’re unable to plan, and that’s a huge part of farming,” said Tess Interlicchia, founder and CEO of Grateful Valley Farm. “It’s hindering everything.”
The OCM has not responded to NY Cannabis Insider’s questions regarding the situation.
A major hindrance to AUCC businesses’ ability to plan, growers say, is that the OCM has consistently failed to live up to their own statements.
The agency’s FAQ document about general licensing says, “AUCCs and AUCPs will be reviewed outside of the queuing process.” But three AUCCs who are applying for permanent licenses say they’re on the same queue as all other applicants.
These three licensees also said that OCM staffers verbally assured them that they would process transitional licenses faster than general applicants, and that AUCCs in good standing that applied for permanent licenses would receive them by February.
To date, none of these businesses have received permanent licenses.
Interlicchia’s company first applied for a microbusiness license in October, but had to resubmit on Nov. 1 due to an error on the OCM’s web portal, she said. She was disheartened when the OCM released its queuing order, which placed her business, Grateful Valley Farm, at No. 1,031. It was even more frustrating when the CCB approved a slate of microbusiness licenses.
“To see all these people get licensed in the first round in February; it’s just like, ‘are you kidding me?” Interlicchia said.
Exasperation at the situation is about much more than hurt feelings, Interlicchia said: Grateful Valley Farm is currently working with a prospective investor who wants to partner with the company on a retail location, but the prospective partnership is contingent on Grateful Valley receiving the microbusiness license that OCM officials told AUCCs they’d already have by now.
“It sucks a lot, I’m really nervous, everything is contingent on this,” Interlicchia said. “Nobody wants to invest until it’s a sure thing.”
Further, Interlicchia said, she’s requested permission from the OCM to continue growing with AUCC canopy limits until December, but hasn’t received a yes or no answer. Because farmers only have another month or two to put seeds in the ground for their next harvest, Grateful Valley has reluctantly decided to move forward and plant the acre of canopy allowed under its AUCC license, she said.
Leentjes of UNIFI Group is also in licensing limbo: he’s waiting to hear back about his company’s microbusiness license, and hasn’t received an approval or denial from OCM to operate under AUCC canopy limits until December. The responses he’s received from the OCM haven’t inspired much confidence, he said.
“There doesn’t seem to be a clear understanding within the office of how the process works,” Leentjes said.
UNIFI Group could start planting up to an acre and hope that the OCM allows the company to extend the terms of its AUCC license, but that seems to him like an unacceptable risk.
“Based on the experience thus far … until you have it in writing, you can’t act on it,” Leentjes said. “It would be a huge gamble for me to take the time and money to put my canopy under my AUCC license in the ground.”
Like Interlicchia and Leentjes, Kate Miller, owner of Weathertop Farm, was under the impression that her transitional microbusiness application would be reviewed before first-time applicants. That’s why she began paying rent on a retail location in November, around the time she put in the application.
OCM licensing staff didn’t begin reviewing Weathertop Farm’s application until four months after it was submitted, Miller said. Even though the company has been cultivating legally from the same location for about two years, the OCM has been asking her to provide information about the location they presumably already possess.
To top it off, Weathertop Farm’s bank recently asked the business to provide an updated license, since their AUCC license will soon expire, Miller said. If the bank doesn’t receive the microbusiness license or an AUCC extension, Weathertop Farms could lose access to its financial services.
Like other AUCCs, Miller has requested that Weathertop Farm be allowed to operate under AUCC canopy limits, but hasn’t heard back. She’s unsure if they will be growing for biomass or retail flower, and she’s planning on moving forward with an AUCC canopy because she doesn’t know what else to do.
“I know they have a lot of other things on their plate – I don’t think there’s any maliciousness involved,” Miller said about the OCM. “But we have to stop carrying their mistakes on our backs.”