Marijuana

New York's Weed Nightmare

How pot bureaucrats used legal weed to push their social justice agenda

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When former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced sexual harassment allegations that threatened to end his career, he made a last-ditch effort to curry favor with the voters: He legalized weed. Maybe he hoped New Yorkers would be too stoned to remember the accusations that he had groped aides or asked female staffers to play strip poker with him.

New York's progressive legislators had been crafting a recreational marijuana bill since 2018, but the version that passed was rammed through as Cuomo fought for political survival. The bill wasn't just about legalizing cannabis; it was about righting historic wrongs by prioritizing licenses for people disproportionately impacted by prohibition. But in practice, the legislation has created a bureaucratic disaster that's failed both business owners and consumers.

Jonathan Elfand spent a decade in prison for growing and selling weed—a conviction that, under New York's new laws, should have given him priority in obtaining a legal dispensary license. Instead, he found himself stuck in bureaucratic limbo, with state regulators refusing to give him a license.

So Elfand did what any guy ballsy enough to run an illegal weed operation in the 1980s would do: He opened up anyway—and New York's authorities responded with aggressive raids, trying to force the closure of his shops.

He wasn't alone. While the state stalled on issuing legal licenses, thousands of gray-market dispensaries popped up, filling the void. Instead of facilitating a smooth transition to a regulated market, New York cracked down.

Unlike other states that simply legalized weed and let businesses flourish, New York took a heavy-handed, social justice–driven approach. Regulators created criteria that would offer priority licenses to women, minorities, veterans, and those from communities that had been "disproportionately impacted" by prohibition.

Even though Elfand had served a decade in prison for weed-related charges, that wasn't enough to guarantee a license. Instead, bureaucrats picked winners and losers, leaving enterprising business owners like Elfand out in the cold.

Shouldn't regulators let pretty much anyone open up, and allow customers to decide who they want to patronize?

But the Empire State isn't the only one that's terribly mismanaged legalization. California, with its overregulation and sky-high taxes, has also struggled to transition from an illicit market to a functioning legal one. Excessive licensing fees and burdensome regulations forced many legitimate businesses to shut down while illegal dealers continued to thrive.

New York copied quite a few components of this failed model. Taxes on legal weed are exorbitantly high, leading most consumers to continue buying from the illegal market. One cannabis industry lobbyist estimated toward the end of 2023 that as much as 90 percent of New Yorkers still purchase weed illegally—two and a half years after legalization.

New York's law explicitly allowed public consumption, unlike places like Amsterdam, which have designated coffee shops where people can get baked in semi-private. The result? A city where the smell of marijuana permeates the streets, frustrating residents who didn't sign up for this level of exposure.

Peter Moskos, a former Baltimore cop and professor at John Jay College, says this rise in open drug use coincided with broader declines in quality of life. "Legal weed came at the same time as rising public disorder," Moskos says. "It gets blamed for bigger problems." The fix for the rampant public disorder, both real and perceived, is somewhat obvious: Allow cops to police low-level quality-of-life offenses again, restoring order to places like the subway system. The more order you have across the city, the less pot will be viewed as the convenient scapegoat for all manner of social ills.

The law's architects justified public consumption as a way to ensure people in public housing—where smoking indoors is illegal—could still partake. But this created more backlash than legislators and activists anticipated.

New York could have followed Amsterdam's model: designating semi-private areas for smoking while enforcing no-smoking laws elsewhere. Instead, the state prioritized social justice and government control over decent policymaking.

Elfand, despite being exactly the kind of person the law was supposed to help, remains shut out of the legal market. But he's not giving up. If he doesn't get a license, he plans to reopen anyway, daring the state to stop him.

"I'm not going to prison again for growing a plant," he says.

New York's marijuana legalization effort was meant to correct past injustices. Instead, it has created a new class of victims: Entrepreneurs denied the opportunity to compete in a free and fair market. The real winners? The black market dealers who never stopped selling in the first place.

Music Credits: "OK igen" (Instrumental Version) - Ikhana via Epidemic Sound/"The Only Survivor" - Marten Moses via Epidemic Sound/"4X4" - Damma Beatz via Epidemic Sound/ "Central Domain" - Pulsed via Epidemic Sound/ "Quietly Tense" - Marten Moses via Epidemic Sound/"My Mental State" - Damma Beatz via Epidemic Sound

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