In advance of Wednesday’s meeting of the Cannabis Control Board, a member of CANY, the Cannabis Association of New York, told Capital Tonight that decisions by the state are hurting the very people the new recreational marijuana law is supposed to help.
CANY is an industry association that represents the whole cannabis supply chain and the businesses that service the industry.
Brittany Carbone, a cannabis farmer and CANY board member, said that the initial challenges facing growers and retailers have been exacerbated by slow retail openings.
“At first, the Dormitory Authority (DASNY) was the big problem with the CAURD thing, but then the blame really has to be put on the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) because it was obvious that they weren’t going to meet the timeline goals,” Carbone said. “So, by continuing to say ‘there will be stores,' they created a false expectation.”
CAURD, or Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licensees, are permitted to open brick-and-mortar retail space from which to sell recreational marijuana grown by farmers like Carbone. DASNY was charged with both running the CAURD program and providing low interest loans to those who met the state’s criteria.
But promised seed money from a venture capital fund to assist weed entrepreneurs has been slow to trickle out. (On June 30, the Hochul administration announced that Chicago Atlantic is investing $150 million in capital in the New York State Cannabis Social Equity Fund). Consequently, very few retail spaces have opened across the state, leaving farmers like Carbone with too much stock of flower with a limited shelf-life.
Carbone claims that OCM should have operated with greater transparency and more realistic timelines.
OCM was unable to provide a comment to Capital Tonight; a late day emailed request for comment to DASNY was not returned by the time this post was published.
There is also anger over what Carbone considers to be the state’s more favorable regulations toward medical marijuana companies that are looking to enter the state’s recreational market.
For example, conditional cultivators, including Carbone, are limited in how much space they may utilize. They may cultivate one acre of flowering canopy outdoors, or 25,000 square feet, in a greenhouse using up to 20 artificial lights. They may also split their crop between outdoor and greenhouse, with a maximum total canopy of 30,000 square feet if the greenhouse flowering canopy remains under 20,000 square feet.
Here are the canopy classifications:
- Tier 5. Greater than 50,000 square feet and up to but not exceeding 100,000 square feet.
- Tier 4. Greater than 25,000 square feet and up to but not exceeding 50,000 square feet;
- Tier 3. Greater than 12,500 square feet and up to but not exceeding 25,000 square feet;
- Tier 2. Greater than 5,000 square feet and up to but not exceeding 12,500 square feet; or
- Tier 1. Up to, but not exceeding 5,000 square feet
Medical marijuana companies, which are well-financed, are authorized to operate up to 100,000 square feet of canopy space, and proposed regulations don’t mention a limit on the number of lights they may use.
“They (New York State) put justice-involved individuals at the forefront, and talked a lot about social and economic equity, which is distressed farmers. But then, by not really fulfilling their promises and the expectations that they laid out, it put the more vulnerable population in a really bad situation and actually made them worse off,” Carbone said.
According to the latest draft regulations, medical marijuana operators (also known as RODs or Registered Organization Dispensing) who are co-locating retail locations to sell both medical and adult use products will be required to pay $5 million upfront to enter the market, as well as $5 million paid within 180 days of the opening of their second co-located dispensary; and more depending upon how much revenue they bring in.
OCM’s executive director Christopher Alexander told Capital Tonight in June that a portion of the licensing fees paid by MSOs will be used to help small retailers.
“There’s definitely a need for some additional outlets to sell cannabis products, and at the same time, there’s also an investment that comes from those registered organizations’ participation in the adult use market – an investment that will be significant in helping to fund our equity programs,” Alexander explained. “It is a bit of a give and take.”
Wednesday’s meeting of the Cannabis Control Board in New York City will include the approval of “growers’ showcases”, which Carbone supports. Carbone also told Capital Tonight that she expects the board to approve hundreds of additional CAURD licenses.