NY Cannabis Insider’s week in legal weed for Oct. 21, 2023

Join NY Cannabis Insider for our next full-day conference on Nov. 16 at the Sonesta White Plains.

How are those applications going for everyone?

As prospective businesses and regulators continue busying themselves with the general application process, we at NY Cannabis Insider wrote about a Cannabis Control Board meeting, and some lesser discussed issues in the Empire State’s legal weed industry.

Let’s recap:

We ran a story about distributor licenses, and how they could disrupt how weed businesses in New York currently operate. Up to this point, the state’s licensed adult-use market has operated without distributors, who will buy, transport and sell cannabis to and from regulated weed businesses under one of the 11 license categories outlined in the MRTA.

But with the general application process closing in December and licensing expected soon after, those cultivators, processors and dispensary operators that are already up and running are considering how they will need to adjust their operations once distributors become part of the equation, and whether these middlemen will disrupt their companies.

Earlier this week, we covered a CCB meeting at which board members extended deadlines for general marijuana licensing applications and granted the Office of Cannabis Management additional enforcement authority during the board’s first meeting since the application period began.

New enforcement rules, which the board approved, now mandate that businesses that receive a notice of violation from the OCM have five days to respond with a “certificate of compliance” form that says they’ve stopped the alleged illegal activity.

If a business does not provide OCM staff with the certificate, agency officials may infer during a hearing that the business has continued the alleged illegal sales. Regulations allow the OCM to impose fines up to $20,000 per day on businesses that sell marijuana without a license.

We also wrote about legislation that would severely cut cannabis dispensary taxes for retailers operating in New York City.

Though New York State recently allowed cannabis operators to deduct business expenses on their state taxes, the changes didn’t apply to New York City’s cannabis businesses. A bill that passed in both houses of the state’s legislature would change New York City’s municipal taxes to allow these deductions (which could amount to a six-figure sum). But as of mid-October, Gov. Kathy Hochul hasn’t yet signed the bill.

Continuing our “NY’s women in cannabis” series, we ran a profile on Yvette Pagano, chief commercial officer at GenTech Scientific LLC and Conquer Scientific LLC; two companies that provide support services for testing laboratories.

We also added a new entry to our “People to know in NY cannabis” series: Paul Suits, Jr., the co-founder and CEO of LakeHouse Cannabis, a dispensary that hopes to open and operate in Cortland.

Lastly, we posted attorney Jeffrey Hoffman’s latest Ask Me Anything segment, in which he answered questions about notice to municipalities that cannabis regulators require of businesses, certified strains and other topics.

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

No Byline Policy

Editorial Guidelines

Corrections Policy

Source