NY farmers with 300K pounds of weed fume over state’s slow shop roll-out
New York’s weed farmers are fuming over the snail’s-pace rollout of legal cannabis shops in the Empire State — complaining they are sitting on mountains of spoiling marijuana crops.
The state’s failure to follow through on OK’ing dozens of dispensaries for legal marijuana as predicted by Gov. Kathy Hochul last year has thwarted the roughly 200 New York farmers who grew 300,000 pounds of cannabis — the equivalent of more than 272 million half-gram joints.
The farmers say their product, most of which is eventually converted into CDB oil, has been going nowhere fast, worrying them that it could soon become too old to peddle.
And this season’s new crop is already on the horizon.
“We’re really under the gun here,” New York marijuana farmer Seth Jacobs told The Associated Press. “We’re all losing money. Even the most entrepreneurial and ambitious among us just can’t move much product in this environment.”
New York state lawmakers approved the sale of medical marijuana in 2014 and then gave the nod to cannabis sales for recreational use in 2021 — but only under a strict store licensing process that critics say is unnecessarily cumbersome.
Last year, Hochul predicted that 20 new legal dispensaries would open every month by the start of 2023 — but only one shop was up and running at the start of the year and just 11 others have since joined in.
“What we really need to see is more retailers get open, and that’s going to actually give us the sustainable solution,” said Brittany Carbone, co-founder of Tricolla Farms, whose stockpile includes 1,500 packs of pre-rolled cigarettes and about 2,000 packages of edible marijuana.
Many farmers said they are now scaling back on their 2023 harvest. Jacobs said his Bud & Boro operation harvested 700 pounds of marijuana last year but is planting on less than the legally allowable acre it was allowed this year.
“We know these cultivators are worried about how to sell last year’s harvest as they decide whether to plant a cannabis crop in 2023, and we will continue to support them as more adult-use dispensaries open to sell their products,” said state Office of Cannabis Management spokesman Aaron Ghitelman in an email to the AP.
A planned $200 million fund for “social equity” among licensees was supposed to help spur business openings, with the pot including $150 million in private investment.
But there have been issues with that, too.
State officials would not say if any private dollars have come in yet, only insisting that “work to raise private capital is ongoing.”
Compounding the problem is the spike in illegal pot outlets in New York City, with Mayor Eric Adams and local officials previously estimating that about 1,500 shops in the five boroughs were illegally selling marijuana and marijuana products.
City officials have stepped up enforcement of the illicit peddlers, and Hochul signed off on a measure to give regulators more authority to crack down on illegal operators by imposing stiffer penalities.
Despite the setbacks, many weed farmers are hopeful they can hold on until things open up.
“This all will get worked out,” Jacobs predicted. “And I want to be there when it does.”
