By Josephine Stratman
New York’s efforts to curb the explosion of unlicensed weed shops have been largely ineffective due to a tangle of limited laws, agencies with overlapping responsibility and spotty enforcement, a Daily News investigation has found.
Despite high-profile actions, like Thursday’s 4-20 raid of a Midtown Weed World shop, the state and city have struggled to stem the proliferation of gray market shops that took root in the long period between the legalization of recreational marijuana in New York and the opening of the first cannabis dispensary in December 2022.
That’s not to say they haven’t tried. A city task force set up by Mayor Adams in November to address the issue has issued about 150 criminal court summonses, 330 notices of violations from the Sheriff’s Office and more than $4 million in fines. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office has put 400 landlords on notice that they could be evicted.
But these efforts have been undermined by a number of issues — most notably that the state law that legalized cannabis doesn’t include significant enforcement provisions for unlicensed sellers. The city, for example, has cited weed trucks for selling food illegally and shops for selling to minors, but cannot tackle the problem directly. NYPD at the Weed World raid made two arrests — they weren’t for selling weed, but for weapons possession.
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