New York’s now rushing to screw up the legal weed industry even MORE
This story raises questions about governance, accountability, and American values.
New York has had six years to figure out how to sell legal marijuana and it still can't get out of its own way. First it was the licensing scheme that got tangled up in lawsuits before a single dispensary opened. Then it was the illegal shops outnumbering the legal ones three or four to one in some neighborhoods, operating in plain sight while the state's chosen operators bled money waiting for approvals that never came.
New Republican Times Editorial Board
Is anybody involved here NOT smoking the product?
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New Republican Times Editorial Board
New York has had six years to figure out how to sell legal marijuana and it still can't get out of its own way. First it was the licensing scheme that got tangled up in lawsuits before a single dispensary opened. Then it was the illegal shops outnumbering the legal ones three or four to one in some neighborhoods, operating in plain sight while the state's chosen operators bled money waiting for approvals that never came. Now the fix for all that is... more rules, layered on top of the rules that already didn't work.
This is what happens when a state treats a commercial industry like a social engineering project first and a business second. Every step of the rollout was built around who should get licenses based on past drug convictions or "community impact" scoring systems, and almost none of it was built around the basic question of how you get product on shelves at a price that beats the guy on the corner. Guess what wins when your legal price is double the black market price and the enforcement against illegal shops is basically nonexistent. It's not complicated. It's Econ 101, and Albany skipped that class.
The infuriating part is that legal weed was supposed to be the responsible, regulated alternative. Instead New York built a system so slow and so bureaucratic that the actual dangerous, unregulated stuff kept right on selling next door, sometimes literally next door to a legal shop struggling to stay open. Every new "reform" announced this week reads like an admission that the last three reforms didn't work either.
States that got this right, and a few did, treated it like retail: streamline licensing, let the market set prices, and put real muscle behind shutting down the illegal operators so the legal ones have a fighting chance. New York keeps doing the opposite and then acting surprised when the numbers come in ugly. At some point you have to wonder if anyone in that building has ever run a business, or just regulated other people running theirs.
Commentary written with AI assistance by the New Republican Times Editorial Board.