Cannabis dispensaries in New York that were facing the possibility of having to move or close have reached an interim agreement with state regulators that would allow them to operate for at least the next five months, court records show.
The dispensaries had sued the state after officials extended the buffer zone between cannabis shops and schools, placing some of the businesses within a 500-foot zone prohibiting marijuana sales.
Under the deal, the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, which issues licenses to marijuana sellers, would delay enforcing until Feb. 15 a revised policy that more strictly defines the buffer between dispensaries and schools. The agreement was outlined on Wednesday in a legal filing submitted by the state attorney general’s office in State Supreme Court in Albany. Jorge Vasquez, the lawyer for the dispensaries, said a judge was expected to sign it.
More than 150 dispensaries were threatened with closure if the Legislature did not carve out an exception to allow them to stay in place. The owners affected by the measurement change are mostly people of color whose applications for dispensary licenses were given priority because they had been punished under New York’s earlier anti-marijuana laws, a central aim of the 2021 law that legalized recreational marijuana.
Dozens of the dispensary owners were awaiting final approval to begin sales or had license renewals coming up in a period before lawmakers could take action.
State law bars dispensaries from opening within 500 feet of schools. The cannabis agency had previously measured the 500-foot distance from a dispensary’s entrance to a school’s. But in July, the state cannabis agency, under new leadership, said that method was incorrect and that officials were required to measure from the schools’ property lines.
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The post N.Y. Marijuana Businesses Facing Possible Closure Win Temporary Reprieve appeared first on New York Times.
