“I feel like you can never get too excited until you make your first sale. There’s just been so much disappointment.”
By Rosalind Adams, THE CITY
This story was originally published by THE CITY. Sign up to get the latest New York City news delivered to you each morning.
Hundreds of people impacted by cannabis-related criminal charges will finally be allowed to move forward with the pot-shops they had already been granted licenses for—if the terms of a settlement agreement filed Tuesday are approved.
With marijuana legalization in 2021, the state created a special class of license called the Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses (CAURD). The aim was to reward those most harmed by decades of harsh drugs laws with the first opportunity to enter the legal market.
That goal stalled in August, when a group of veterans sued the state, arguing that the CAURD program violated the law by not offering licenses to other social equity groups like women and veterans at the same time. An injunction preventing any new stores from opening has been in place since then.
At the time of the injunction, the state had already awarded 463 CAURD licenses, but just 23 dispensaries had opened. Thirty other