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.
The Office of Cannabis Management and the attorney general’s office declined to comment when reached by email.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has said she was surprised and angry to learn the agency had been measuring the buffer incorrectly, though officials in her office were responsible for approving the method in 2022 and 2023. At the time, her administration was under pressure to get legal stores open to combat a proliferation of illicit shops.
Key lawmakers and former officials at the cannabis agency, including its first executive director, pushed back when the governor and current officials described their actions as an error. Other lawmakers and community groups had expressed concerns about the proximity of some dispensaries to schools.
The policy shift created another headache for business owners who had navigated years of red tape and lawsuits to open their dispensaries, and who are still contending with strict rules and high taxes while unlicensed shops undercut them.
Coss Marte, the co-founder and chief executive of ConBud, a dispensary on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, said he was relieved to be able to renew his license, which expires on Oct. 6. Although state officials had said affected dispensaries could continue operating if their permits lapsed, he said vendors that provide key services such as marketing were skittish and that the uncertainty left him unable to make plans.
“It’s hard to predict what’s going to happen next in this industry,” he said, “but I think it’s a win.”
Nubia Ashley, who was waiting for approval to open her dispensary in Manhattan when officials announced the change, said she was ecstatic about the deal. She said she was eager to pick up negotiations with farms whose products she intends to sell.
“I’m going to open the second they tell me I can,” she said.