New York Issues Raft Of New Cannabis Licenses After Court Lifts Injunction
April 4, 2023New York regulators have issued 99 new provisional cannabis licenses following a federal appeals court ruling that lifted an injunction against licensing across large swaths of the Empire State. In total, New York has now issued 165 provisional licenses.
A set of judges on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals lifted the restraining order that has held up the process of awarding retail licenses in certain regions for months. Five regions of the state have been prevented from moving forward due to lawsuits challenging the licensing process, but now four of those regions—Brooklyn, Central New York, Mid-Hudson, and Western New York—have been given the green light. That leaves the Finger Lakes region, where the injunction remains in effect.
Only five licensed cannabis retail locations have opened statewide so far, compared with around 1,500 unlicensed shops in New York City alone. A sixth licensed location is set to open this week in Queens.
Prior to the ruling, the Coalition for Access to Regulated & Safe Cannabis (CARSC), the industry group composed of multistate operators Acreage Holdings Curaleaf, Green Thumb Industries, and PharmaCann, as well as some smaller players, released a statement blasting New York governor Kathy Hochul and state cannabis regulators, saying their approach to the adult-use market “has clearly backfired.”
CARSC is the same group that recently sued the state over licensing discrimination, claiming that the Office of Cannabis Management’s (OCM) decision to reserve the first 150 recreational cannabis retail licenses for social equity applicants disadvantaged their companies and shut them out of the market for the foreseeable future.
In the statement, CARSC takes aim at the OCM and the Cannabis Control Board (CCB), writing that they “have willingly allowed—if not outright encouraged—the illicit market to flourish across New York, undercutting and devaluing the legal market, reducing the ability to generate tax revenue, and putting consumers unnecessarily at risk. Even worse these illicit operators are making money hand over fist in part by avoiding the payment of taxes. New York’s tax collections for legal sales of adult-use cannabis totaled just $7,000 in February—down from $20,000 in January.”—Danny Sullivan
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