NYC expands unlicensed weed crackdown to stores ‘baking with cannabis’
Hawking unlicensed cannabis edibles was half-baked from the start.
Along with a crackdown on the city’s omnipresent illegitimate weed vendors, law enforcement agencies are also targeting stores selling unregulated, potent marijuana munchies.
The New York City Sheriff’s Office seized more than $2 million in products last month and issued $4.5 million in fines to unlicensed vendors, Sheriff Anthony Miranda said at a city Office of Public Safety briefing Friday.
A joint initiative with the city’s Department of Health also cracked down on “locations that were baking with cannabis,” according to Miranda.
“We went in with them and they were able to enforce the imposing civil penalties of over $34,000 at one location, and they ended up closing down those two locations who were selling baked goods,” the sheriff said, without specifying what businesses were targeted.
Eating food infused with cannabis can result in a debilitating or dangerously potent high that can last for a much longer period of time than smoking pot, he cautioned.
“Again, these are unregulated products. There’s no certainty as to how much product is contained inside these things, so there’s certain health risks to the community,” Miranda said.
“The same thing happens with these illegal smoke shops. These are a health risk to our community because they’re unregulated and we don’t know what’s being mixed in them, or how much product is being sold in them. So we don’t know what the impact will be when people are using the product.”
“Cannabis is legal. It’s legal to purchase. It’s legal to utilize cannabis in the city and the state of New York now, but there are dangers to having unregulated sales,” he added.
“Just the same way as you’re not allowed to cook moonshine in your bathtub and sell it on the street, you’re also not allowed to start a restaurant without having the right requirements and licenses in place.”
As the Office of Cannabis Management and Department of Taxation and Finance teamed up with law enforcement agencies to stamp out illicit smoke shops in the boroughs, the City Council last week enacted a law that would also allow landlords who rent to the unlicensed vendors to be slapped with $10,000 fines.
The new penalties, however, came as the state’s stilted legal industry was dealt another delay.
A judge ruled Friday no new legal shops could open, or new licenses be awarded, until the resolution of a lawsuit by a group military veterans that accused the state’s rollout as unconstitutional.
The plaintiffs had argued the state violated the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act by prioritizing drug criminals for the first round of licenses over military veterans and other “social and economic equity” groups.
Only nine authorized dispensaries have opened in the five boroughs, according to the Office of Cannabis Management.
Gov. Kathy Hochul estimated this spring there were some 2,500 unregulated cannabis stores that had sprouted up in the city.
