Bisnow/Ciara Long
As New York City’s legal cannabis market has been a slow, grinding process, a gray retail cannabis market has proliferated throughout the city.
Relief has arrived for licensed cannabis dispensaries months after an injunction stopped hopeful New York marijuana retailers in their tracks and Mayor Eric Adams launched renewed efforts to take down illegally operating weed shops.
Settlements have been reached for two lawsuits that had brought the state’s legal cannabis industry to a standstill, Green Market Report first reported. The deals, approved by the state’s Cannabis Control Board, would allow the state to continue issuing Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses if it is approved by the Albany County judge who blocked the program.
The suits, both of which were brought in August by plaintiff Carmine Fiore, sought to challenge how the Office of Cannabis Management had designed the licensing process.
While the state’s cannabis retail laws allow the OCM to prioritize licenses for social equity candidates, the plaintiffs, which included disabled veterans, argued that there was no legal basis for prioritizing people who had been affected by prior marijuana charges over other types of social equity candidates. A state judge agreed and imposed an injunction in August,