The shift came without explanation, two months after some of the medical marijuana companies sued regulators to gain entry to the recreational market. Some of those businesses have openly attacked the New York state program that awards retail licenses to people convicted of marijuana offenses. When that occurs, it will put the smaller dispensaries run by people with past marijuana convictions, currently the only ones who can legally sell recreational marijuana, into direct competition with large companies that have all but shut out small players in other states. The situation has taken on greater urgency since the Cannabis Control Board, which approves licenses and regulations, voted last month to allow the major cannabis firms behind the state’s medical marijuana program to wade into the recreational market in December - two years ahead of time. But a year after Hochul assigned leasing and financing tasks to the Dormitory Authority, a public construction behemoth, the agency has not found enough landlords willing to rent to dispensaries and has raised no money from investors for the loan fund. It was to provide 150 of them with ready-to-open locations and a total of $200 million in low-interest loans. The retail initiative was meant to help people convicted of marijuana offenses gain a foothold in the legal cannabis industry by making them the only ones eligible to sell weed legally for an initial, fixed period of time. Some said they were facing the loss of their land and businesses. The delays in opening the state’s first legal recreational marijuana dispensaries have reverberated through the supply chain, leaving farmers and processors holding hundreds of millions of dollars in crops that are slowly deteriorating. “What they were describing was, they’re in the same space as us and we came along six months later,” Ovalle said in an interview. The pair had sought advice from others who had started the process, only to learn that many of them had made little progress in opening their own shops and were afraid of speaking out against the regulators who controlled their fates. Gahrey Ovalle, a 47-year-old businessperson on Long Island and a retail licensee, signed the letter with his brother, whose previous conviction helped them to secure a license in April. The outcry drew support from cannabis farmers, processors and others with a stake in the recreational marijuana industry who said the vision of a cannabis market that uses the licensing process to right old wrongs and promote small business is still far from being realized. “We are now very clearly and quickly learning that it is now to our disadvantage in the current landscape,” they said. The prospective sellers said that they appreciated how the state’s tight control over the program was meant to benefit them but added that, more often, it was holding them back. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times Some said that they felt pressured to accept inflated rents and construction costs, while others said that the state was withholding funding from those who wanted to lease space or handle matters on their own, according to the letter, which was also sent to The New York Times. In a letter to regulators and the governor’s office last month, a coalition of dozens of the prospective dispensary operators described being blocked by the state from selecting their own storefront locations. Kathy Hochul suggested last fall that more than 100 dispensaries would be operating by this summer, just 12 have opened since regulators issued the first licenses in November. Today, that effort appears to be foundering: Although Gov. When New York state began laying the groundwork for its recreational cannabis industry last year, officials cast atoning for the harm done by the war on drugs as a cornerstone of the ambitious plan - and promised to give people who were previously convicted of marijuana offenses the first opportunity to sell it legally. Customers during the opening day at Smacked LLC, a legal marijuana dispensary in New York, on Jan 24, 2023.
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