At a meeting of the Cannabis Advisory Board last week, state Office of Cannabis Management Executive Director Chris Alexander sounded a chipper note in announcing the full opening of the cannabis cultivator, retailer, processor and microbusiness licenses in the state today, saying it will be “the best market in the world.”
That’s bullish for a regulatory and logistical system that has already shot itself in the foot over the two years of the market’s early rollout, consistently making errors that have slowed the actual opening of legal recreational marijuana retailers to a trickle while the illegal shops — which at first operated in gray areas that made true enforcement all but impossible — sprung up everywhere.
We doubt that OCM and CAB can still establish a world-class marijuana sector, but for some would-be business owners who oriented themselves around the possibility of getting one of the early restricted licenses it probably already be too late.
Even before the so-called conditional program was blocked by the courts for bizarrely including only one of the various social equity groups identified in the law itself, regulators had given confusing instructions; slow-rolled the efforts to help small entrepreneurs with siting and business development; made the product itself less safe with testing failures and a pointless requirement for the marijuana to be grown outside; and generally dropped the ball.
Now, we find ourselves with only 18 officially licensed stores open around the state, competing desperately against thousands of illegals that don’t have to worry about technicalities like inspected product and paying taxes.
The toothpaste can’t be put back in the tube, but the state can at least take some steps to correct these deficiencies going forward. It should consider it a priority to grant the new licenses and support to the existing license holders and applicants who’ve been left in limbo by the court’s injunction, and broadly revamp efforts not just to process applications but help get businesses up and running quickly.
While lawmakers’ dream of a thriving legal cannabis sector rooted in small, local businesses run primarily by disadvantaged people who could bring the profits back to their communities increasingly seems like a mirage that won’t come to pass, the state has the tools to at least preserve some of this vision by moving fast on those applicants.
Regulators are clearly able to adapt to clean up their messes. It’s welcome that in this case OCM is creating an expedited license with approvals set to begin as applications close on Nov. 3. After its repeated missteps caused existing cannabis to pile up in warehouses, unable to be sold at retail, it took the step of launching the Cannabis Growers Showcase to help move some of that weed before it became unusable.
Clearly the regulators are able to adapt, and so they should take every lesson learned from the past two years of failures and false starts and apply it to the process going forward. This should also mark a new era of enforcement; while some of the illegal businesses will simply collapse on their own, they will take the legal market down with them. Enforcement against the illegals must not be just a minor setback for outlaw businesses that will be back up and running the next day.
New York Daily News Editorial Board
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