Help budding businesses: With retail cannabis applications in, move fast on business support
Cannabis is well known for causing lethargy. It turns out that having to implement cannabis-related regulations also seems to make state officials sluggish, as evidenced by the slow rollout of New York’s homegrown marijuana industry.
A casual observer might be shocked to learn that, 18 months after the state passed a law permitting the sale and consumption of marijuana by adults, it is still not possible to directly purchase a cannabis product for recreational use from a legal dispensary, with what vendors exist resorting to clever workarounds like selling “memberships” that come with the product. The leisurely pace has also fed the growth of a now-entrenched gray market.
With the first batch of retail dispensary applications finally under consideration, that should soon change, with officials hopeful that consumers will be able to purchase marijuana at state-approved sellers by the end of the year. The question now is whether New York will follow through on commitments to prioritize the people who were most affected by the prior criminalization of marijuana, or let large commercial interests quickly corner the market as they have in other states.
We commended New York’s decision to reserve the first licenses for those who faced, or had family that faced, criminal conviction for cannabis offenses, but it was always understood that first dibs on the paperwork was a limited head start for small businesses competing against national conglomerates, which is why it was to be accompanied by an effort to assist with finding ready retail space and business loans.
With the applications already in, the state has yet to set up any of this or fundraise for tens of millions of private industry dollars that were going to be connected to needy emerging business owners. It should kick these efforts into high gear, giving these businesses time to establish a foothold. That must go hand in hand with aggressive public education to make clear that the product is only legal for those 21 and up. And let’s fix the state’s outdated driving-while-high laws while we’re at it.
