Communities in New York that were swept up in the state’s decades-long fight against marijuana will see a benefit from the legal sale of cannabis after state officials approved $5 million in grants to nonprofits serving some of the hardest-hit areas.
The Cannabis Advisory Board, a quasi-government panel responsible for distributing the grants, awarded them this week to 50 nonprofits offering mental health, job training and housing services to young people up to 24 years old. Each organization will receive $100,000, which comes from taxes on the sale of cannabis at licensed dispensaries as well as business licensing fees.
Fifteen of the organizations are in New York City, including Community Connections for Youth in the Bronx, which mentors young people who have been arrested or suspended from school. Belinda Ramos, the executive director, said in an interview that the grant money would help pay for a leadership development program. The award validates grass roots efforts to repair the harm drug enforcement did to neighborhoods in the South Bronx, which had some of the highest rates of arrests for marijuana, she added.
“We are trying to turn the tide around the narrative on what the war on drugs did to us over the decades,” she said.
New York legalized recreational cannabis in 2021 with a requirement that a portion of the tax revenues be invested in communities that were disproportionately targeted for marijuana arrests. But the money was slow to come and less than expected because of delays in setting up licensed dispensaries, prompting the advisory board to focus narrowly on youth programs for the first disbursement this year.
Joseph Belluck, the chairman of the advisory board, urged its members on Tuesday to be “vigilant” against efforts to steer funds meant for the grants to other causes.
“It has taken us a very, very long time to get here,” he said. “So I’m thrilled that we’re at the point where we’re able to start putting money back into communities across New York State.”
The state’s 499 licensed dispensaries have generated $2.3 billion in sales revenues since late 2022. Businesses that sell cannabis to dispensaries pay a 9 percent wholesale tax, while consumers pay a 13 percent tax on recreational sales and 3.15 percent on medical purchases.
Part of the recreational sales tax goes to local governments. The rest goes to the state to pay for the administration of the cannabis program before it is divided up for education, community grants and drug treatment programs.
The selected nonprofits were chosen from 451 applications. They were awarded grants for programs that spanned activism, agriculture, the arts, education, jobs and housing support.
Meredith Sladek, a spokeswoman for the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Garden on Staten Island, said the grant will finance an apprenticeship for a young adult from the North Shore. The apprentice would work at its heritage farm, learning sustainable practices and promoting community engagement, she said. The farm grows produce that it sells locally, and many of its customers rely on food aid programs to make purchases.
Tim Lord, the co-founder and co-executive director of DreamYard, an arts and social justice nonprofit in the Bronx, said the grant would pay for an expansion of its paid internship program for high school students.
The board plans to expand eligibility for the program next year, though funding will remain the same. That’s because $50 million of the cannabis sales tax revenues was used to pay back the state for an investment in a failed plan to lease and renovate the state’s first 150 licensed dispensaries.
Mr. Belluck said that he had spoken to lawmakers about preventing those funds from being tapped again to cover the fallout from the state cannabis agency’s decision to revise how it measures the required 500-foot buffer between dispensaries and schools.
Ebro Darden, a radio host and a member of the board, said at the meeting that the grants had become even more important as federal spending on social aid programs is cut.
“This is where the rubber meets the road, guys,” he told the board. “The whole reason why people were gung-ho and bullish about this policy was to try to figure out a new revenue stream to help communities,” he said.
Ashley Southall writes about cannabis legalization in New York.
The post Cannabis Taxes Fund First Wave of Grants to Community Groups in New York appeared first on New York Times.
