How state’s timeline measures up
Marijuana rollout seen as middle of the pack on lag time before sales
New York is not likely to allow its first recreational marijuana sales for over a year and a half after legalization. But data from the rest of the country show that the delay is hardly an outlier: most states took between one and two years to open dispensaries.
Some advocates for legalization, including strategist and coalition-builder Imani Dawson, noted that cannabis businesses and entrepreneurs with preexisting access to capital often push harder to open cannabis markets quickly. She doesn’t think the regulators should bend to powerful players’ urgency.
“New York has been fighting for a legalization framework for over a decade, this isn’t a new fight; they are taking time to be intentional,” Dawson said. “States that move really quickly tend to overlook things that they have to then go back and fix in hindsight, or they are dealing with unintended consequences.”
The quickest-acting state, Arizona, had less than three months between the passage of a ballot measure legalizing cannabis for adult use and the first legal sales. But according to Heather Trela, a marijuana policy researcher at the SUNY Rockefeller Institute of Government, the southwestern state was facing several anomalous factors.
“Arizona’s referendum had some very concrete dates in it for when things had to be done,” Trela said, adding that instead of appointing industry regulators from scratch the state had an existing agency take the new industry on, and then leaned on preexisting medical marijuana facilities and cultivators to supply the market.
On the other end of the spectrum, Maine — which took four years to kick off its recreational sales — was led by a governor, Paul Lepage, who remained opposed to legalization, in spite of its ballot passage.
“Gov. Lepage vetoed a lot of things, because he didn’t want it to happen,” Trela said. “And then the pandemic hit, and that certainly delayed their initial plan.”
Melissa Moore, a director at Drug Policy Alliance, pointed out that New York also lost about half a year when the administration of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo let months pass without selecting regulators who could kick off the process.
But she thinks regulators are moving at a good pace now, and that the public perception that the process has been slow is related to how long many New Yorkers felt they had already waited for legalization.
“Public opinion has been there for so long. People’s sentiments, even in 2018, 2019 were like: how come we don’t have this already, what is going on?” Moore said. “And the fact that there is such a robust market already in New York state, I think also leads people to think like, how come you just can’t flip a switch?”
Moore thinks the state has been right to tread carefully.
Also, an important part of the state’s regulatory process are the public comment periods, said Ryan Lepore, one of the founders of New York City’s branch of reform organization NORML. Lepore said it’s valuable for constituents to comment on draft rules even if it delays the rollout. But he added that many downstate consumers won’t have the same frustrations as residents of upstate communities.
“It’s a tale of two states,” Lepore said. “In downstate New York it’s very easy to access (illicit) cannabis right now, it’s considered almost a golden age because it’s so accessible . ... Now, if you’re in upstate New York, it’s a very different conversation because you really don’t have as many access points. Rarely do people get to go and look at the flower before they purchase it, rarely is there competition to help prices or quality control.”