In yet a new dysfunctional turn in New York’s rollout of legal cannabis sales, city community boards now face a mad rush of applicants for OKs to open licensed shops.
No, boards aren’t to issue licenses — but getting permission to operate at a site is a key step in applying to the state Office of Cannabis Management (Mismanagement is more accurate) for one.
OCM delayed the process for most of a year by limiting applications to the “justice involved,” one of several categories the Legislature privileged in the law that launched this mess.
But after a successful lawsuit from veterans and other categories who were supposed to be favored, OCM threw up its hands and opened the door wide.
So now the 1,500 or so shops that had opened illegally are going all-out to get “kosherized.”
Some are filing multiple applications, obviously hoping to luck out on one of them.
The law orders boards to decide within 30 days, but expect most of them to delay: They’re just not set up to handle the dozens of applications now rushing in.
And OCM, weeks after it set off the gold rush, is only now educating boards on their roles and responsibilities.
One community board official told The Post it’s “a free-for-all wrapped up in a clusterf – – k.”
Blame then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature for passing a law designed to do everything but make this process orderly, a goof that’s already given us the plague of illegal shops.
But Gov. Kathy Hochul is still playing the same game, by her own account “working to build the most equitable adult-use cannabis industry in the nation that invests in communities and rights the wrongs of the past” — rather than seeking sane regulations that protect communities and kids.
We can’t say how many of those charged with getting all this sorted out are themselves regularly using cannibus products, but they sure are acting dazed and confused.