Everybody WAS for recreational marijuana right?
Sooooo?
The Lawmakers in New York jointed others around the country and decriminalisation ….
It worked….
Cops stopped making arrest for causal weed smoking and possession….
The state THOUGHT they’d get money for the budget and for education….
But something else also happened…..
Local places began selling weed on their own….
And NOT going thru the process of registering with the state and paying taxes….
The New York Times has been following the story about how the cops and local sheriff’s have ‘tried’ to close down the illegal sales , with little or no success….
And now have the focus on how difficult it has been to put the ‘Genie back in the Box’….
Multiple other unlicensed shops were open for business within a few blocks, offering cannabis-based intoxicants including joints, vape cartridges, rosin, THC-infused gummies, chocolates and tinctures.
Nearly 3,000 unlicensed cannabis stores are estimated to have opened across New York City since 2021, when a state bill was passed legalizing recreational marijuana and allowing for the distribution of retail cannabis licenses. There are 132 licensed adult-use dispensaries across the state, according to the Office of Cannabis Management, with 62 in the city.
Few neighborhoods in New York City may have been better equipped to fight the crush of renegade shops than the Lower East Side, which has a long history of activism and civic engagement.
In 2022, with local authorities and the Office of Cannabis Management doing little to shut down the shops, some neighborhood residents created a spreadsheet listing the locations of nearly three dozen unlicensed sellers, which they said they distributed to government officials, hoping to prompt enforcement.
That D.I.Y. ethos was consistent with previous actions on the Lower East Side and in the neighboring East Village, including a picket in the 1980s against drug dealers, rallies in the 1990s against the destruction of community gardens and protests in the 2000s over an influx of bars….
…
But residents say that the unlicensed weed shops have seemed impervious to their efforts.
“We’ve been begging for help,” said Diem Boyd, a longtime resident who has organized neighborhood efforts against bars, among other causes, and helped coordinate the spreadsheet effort.
That effort was born of sidewalk conversations among neighbors who were struck by the sight of illegal establishments operating openly. Eight people, including Ms. Boyd, a public-school teacher, a landscape architect, a dance instructor and a television sound engineer, worked on the project.
They gathered information from others in the neighborhood, they said, researched city records, communicated through a shared Google document and monitored the unlicensed shops on nights and weekends, observing them from the sidewalk and sometimes venturing inside to corroborate details.
Most of the residents who helped gather information declined to speak publicly about the process because of fears for their safety….
…
But the rollout of the licensed shops has stumbled, tripped up by lawsuits, bureaucratic delays and a lack of financial assistance for retailers. At one point policymakers promised to provide turnkey storefronts for new business owners. Those promises never came through.
Jeffrey Hoffman, a cannabis lawyer and legalization advocate who supports closing the unlicensed shops, said the authorities in New York had rightly avoided arresting people of color when shuttering the stores, adding: “The whole purpose of the law was to stop that.”
In a statement, the mayor’s office said that Mr. Adams was committed to closing illegal shops that threatened the “health and safety” of New Yorkers.
“Both the mayor and the sheriff have a long history of fighting against the criminalization of cannabis,” the statement added. “And we have been clear that these operations allow us to strike a balance between shutting down illegal shops that are unlawfully selling potentially deadly products and supporting justice-impacted cannabis business owners.”…
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Mr. Hoffman, the cannabis lawyer, predicted it would take months or longer to shut down all the unlicensed shops, given their numbers and that many owners would likely adapt by carrying out clandestine sales.
“The cat-and-mouse game is on,” Mr. Hoffman said, adding: “You used to be able to do it with impunity and now they just have to be more careful.”….