Nearly 70 New York lawmakers on Tuesday sent a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) urging her to sign the Cannabis Crop Rescue Act which would allow state-licensed cannabis farmers to sell their products to dispensaries located on Tribal lands in the state. The law passed the Legislature in June but Hochul has yet to sign it into law.
New York’s adult-use rollout has been plagued by lawsuits, including one that has led to an injunction against any licensing under the current “conditional” rules that provided the first batch of retail licenses to social-equity applicants; however, in August, a judge found that the state broke its own rules by not including service-disabled military veterans in the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program. Shortly after the decision, regulators announced they planned to open general licensing on October 4, which would likely end the legal challenge by veterans and related injunction.
In the letter to Hochul, the lawmakers note that “there are over 200 cannabis farmers trying to sell their crops but only 23 dispensaries open statewide,” which “has resulted in more than 250,000 pounds of unsold cannabis.”
During a Cannabis Control Board