As of early May, more than three years after New York\u00a0legalized<\/a>\u00a0recreational \u2028marijuana, just\u00a0119 licensed dispensaries<\/a>\u00a0were serving that market in the entire state. Unauthorized pot shops outnumbered legal outlets by 20 to 1, according to\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, with\u00a0more than 2,000<\/a> operating in New York City alone. The state had less than one licensed pot store per 100,000 residents\u2014in contrast with about six in\u2028Massachusetts<\/a>, 10 in\u00a0Maine<\/a>, 11 in\u00a0Colorado<\/a>, 19 in\u00a0Oregon<\/a>, and 48 in\u00a0New Mexico<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Legislators and regulators could have avoided this “disaster,” as New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently\u00a0called it<\/a>, had they learned from the\u00a0mistakes<\/a>\u00a0of other states that have struggled to displace the black market. Yet New York politicians somehow did not anticipate what would happen after people could legally use marijuana but could not obtain it from legal sources.<\/p>\n

Legislators did not allow home cultivation, and they initially did not allow medical dispensaries to serve recreational consumers. New York created a complicated, costly, and sluggish licensing process that prioritized “equity” and “diversity” above efficiency. The state imposed \u2028burdensome fees, taxes, and regulations that made it difficult for legal dispensaries to compete with the unlicensed stores that sprang up to fill the supply gap.<\/p>\n

New York did not let medical dispensaries enter the market until last December. Even then, it\u00a0charged<\/a>\u00a0companies $20 million for the privilege of operating up to three outlets.<\/p>\n

New businesses faced fees up to $300,000, and regulators gave priority to retail applicants who were deemed \u2028disadvantaged, including people with marijuana conviction records and their relatives.\u00a0Those preferences provoked\u00a0lawsuits<\/a>\u00a0that further delayed the licensing process, and they blocked applicants who might have been\u00a0better equipped<\/a>\u00a0to run a successful business.<\/p>\n

Despite these problems, Hochul remains\u00a0proud<\/a>\u00a0of New York’s “social equity” program. But she has\u00a0ordered<\/a>\u00a0a bureaucratic overhaul to speed up retail license approvals and has voiced support for cutting the state’s heavy\u00a0marijuana taxes<\/a>, which currently include a three-tiered wholesale tax based on THC content as well as a 13 percent retail tax.<\/p>\n

Legislators should keep in mind that licensed shops are competing with a black market where the tax rate is zero. New York also should reexamine the onerous\u00a0regulations<\/a>\u00a0that make legal weed more expensive and less accessible.<\/p>\n

Although Hochul has\u00a0promised<\/a>\u00a0to “shut down illicit operators,” any such crackdown is apt to inflict the sort of harm that legalization was supposed to ameliorate, punishing entrepreneurs for filling the yawning gap left by the state’s misguided policies and administrative incompetence. Nor is enforcement likely to succeed, given the abysmal track record of the war on weed\u2014a crusade that legislators supposedly ended three years ago.<\/p>\n

The post The Government Caused New York's Legal Pot 'Disaster'<\/a> appeared first on Reason.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The state has thousands of unauthorized shops but fewer than 200 licensed marijuana sellers. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":""},"categories":[19,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103644"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/3rdcitynews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}