Cannabis agency needs a reset
The audit ordered by Gov. Hochul is a start, but the troubled Office of Cannabis Management needs more than tweaks.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse for New York’s Office of Cannabis Management — because, really, how could they? — along comes news that an official at the agency has been placed on leave amid an investigation into alleged retaliation against a producer who dared raise concerns about the state’s troubled marijuana rollout.
The official is Damian Fagon, the cannabis agency’s chief equity officer, who is accused of orchestrating a recall of cannabis gummies made by a Columbia County-based company after its owner, Jenny Argie, raised entirely legitimate questions about illicit products potentially entering the market and being passed off as grown in New York.
Whether the recall was retaliatory remains to be seen. Nevertheless, the episode comes after a string of blunders by OCM — highlighting the need for the long-overdue audit of the agency ordered last week by Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has called the state’s cannabis rollout “a disaster.”
She’s right about that. Unfortunately for the Democratic governor, it’s a disaster that has largely occurred on her watch.
It’s true that establishing a framework for legal cannabis sales was always going to be a significant challenge. And New York lawmakers didn’t make the job easier by attempting to use the fledging industry as a way to remedy racial inequities and by giving those harmed by cannabis prohibition the first crack at opening stores. Worthy goals, for sure. But very difficult to pull off.
Still, the complexity and importance of the task is precisely why New Yorkers needed competence and steadiness from OCM. Instead, we’ve been subjected to years of chaos and a bureaucracy so troubled that, judging by news reports, you might assume the word embattled is part of the agency’s formal name.
As dispensaries have trickled into existence, the resulting pain has been significant. Farmers, producers and wannabe business owners who trusted that the state could get its act together now face, in some cases, financial ruin. The agency faces a host of lawsuits, including from white applicants and disabled military veterans who say they were discriminated against as licenses were awarded. The state’s failure to crack down on the proliferation of illegal pot retailers has only exacerbated problems.
Apparently fed up with it all, at long last, Ms. Hochul has tapped state Office of General Services Commissioner Jeanette Moy to conduct a monthlong audit of OCM designed to “identify opportunities for improvement” (they shouldn’t be hard to find) and to implement a strategic plan for an agency that seems to have been operating without one. The ultimate goal, says the governor, is to process licensing applications more quickly and get cannabis businesses open.
That would be progress. But Ms. Moy’s touch shouldn’t be gentle, because OCM needs more than a review and tweaks. The agency is broken, and only a complete overhaul will fix it.