NY Cannabis Insider’s week in legal weed for June 3, 2023

Join NY Cannabis Insider at our next industry networking event on June 8 at Beak & Skiff. Tickets will sell out.

News about legislative votes on cannabis policy, action on an important lawsuit against New York marijuana regulators and other stories kept us at NY Cannabis Insider busy for another week. Let’s take a look at the news we covered last week:

We announced that speakers from Beak & Skiff, ayrloom and licensed dispensary Union Square Travel Agency will participate in NY Cannabis Insider’s industry meetup at Beak & Skiff on June 8. This limited-ticket event will bring together current and hopeful licensees, entrepreneurs, attorneys, and more for an intimate discussion about the history, heritage, and evolution of the Beak & Skiff brand, followed by an opportunity to network and receive business planning advice.

On Thursday we reported Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a bill that narrowly avoided a possible supply chain stoppage for legal cannabis in New York. Members of the State Assembly and Senate on Wednesday passed legislation that gives Adult-Use Conditional Cultivation and Adult-Use Conditional Processing licensees permission to continue distributing to dispensaries until June 1, 2024. The law also extends AUCC’s ability to do limited processing until the same date.

The June 1 deadline had become a major concern among licensed growers, processors, and retailers in recent months. Lawmakers passed the bill at the last possible moment before the statute they passed last year would have barred conditionally licensed growers and processors from selling their products to retailers.

We wrote about the Cannabis Control Board approving a settlement agreement in the lawsuit  Variscite NY One, Inc., brought against regulators, and reported about the settlement being filed in court. With Variscite’s case effectively over, the Office of Cannabis Management may now issue CAURD licenses to businesses in the Finger Lakes, which was previously under injunction. The settlement promises Variscite will receive a general retail license once the OCM begins issuing them.

Variscite’s federal lawsuit against the OCM began playing a prominent role in the state’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary program in November, when U.S. Northern District of New York Judge Gary Sharpe issued an injunction that prevented OCM from granting CAURD licenses to businesses in five regions, but later narrowed that to a single region: the Finger Lakes.

Paula Collins, a tax attorney dedicated to the cannabis industry and a co-founder of the NY Consortium of Cannabis Accountants, contributed a guest column about an emergency situation currently affecting New York’s legal cannabis industry. A key issue Collins identified is the dearth of dispensaries currently open, which means there aren’t enough stores to sell all the weed cultivators have grown.

In a guest column, Colin Decker – a weed industry veteran who owns and operates Hudson Valley-based Sensei Growth Consulting – questioned whether the OCM and the Cannabis Compliance Training & Mentorship program they established can be trusted. Decker notes that he’s troubled by survey questions being asked of participants in the program – many of whom are legacy operators.

Continuing our “NY’s women in cannabis” series, we ran a profile on Annette Fernandez, the founder of La Casa Lola who worked previously at the Uptown Cannabis Coalition and Audubon Haze Society.

We also added a new entry to our “People to know in NY cannabis” series: Dan Livingston, the executive director of the Cannabis Association of New York and a former city council member in Binghamton.

Lastly, we posted attorney Jeffrey Hoffman’s latest Ask Me Anything segment, in which he answered questions about the Variscite lawsuit, CAURD licenses and more.

Have a great weekend everyone, we’ll be back with plenty more next week.