REMARKS
Council Member Brannan's remarks on cannabis law enforcement and licensing challenges
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4 min
Council Member Justin L. Brannan, chair of the Finance Committee, addresses the challenges in enforcing cannabis laws and implementing the legal cannabis market in New York City. He emphasizes the need for expediting legal licenses while praising enforcement efforts against unlicensed shops.
- Brannan highlights the delay in issuing legal cannabis licenses, which has led to a proliferation of unlicensed shops.
- He commends the NYC Sheriff's Office for their enforcement efforts through Operation Padlock to Protect.
- The council member stresses the importance of balancing enforcement with accelerating the legal licensing process to achieve the goals of cannabis legalization.
Justin L. Brannan
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Thank you, Chair, Brewer.
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Also note, we've been joined by Council member, Brooks Powers, and Council member, Salam.
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I'm Council member, Brandon.
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I have the privilege of chairing the committee on Finance.
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And I wanna thank Chair Brewer for her dedication to putting this hearing together.
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We work long and hard in convening this.
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I appreciate her efforts in in bringing us all here today.
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Also, of course, one who Welcome to sheriff.
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Thank you for all your work and the enforcement efforts against our unlicensed cannabis shops.
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3 years ago, the state legalized the adult use of cannabis taking a large step.
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Toward recognizing and reversing harms inflicted by the country's war on drugs era policies.
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A key piece of this was not just to authorize license retail sale of cannabis, but to direct the first licenses to people who personally or their families had a marijuana related criminal conviction, and to earmark a percentage of those tack of tax revenue generated for programs and communities that were hardest hit by those war on drugs era policies.
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But the state stumbled badly in implementing this landmark change in our laws and the glacial pace of bureaucracy threatens to now criminalize what we've legalized.
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Over a year has passed since the since recreational adult use marijuana was legalized, but we're still waiting on licenses.
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This delay has resulted in a gray area free for all, where bad faith actors rushed in to operate unlicensed cannabis shops and sell untaxed and dangerous products.
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Clear responsibilities and tools for enforcement against these illegal shops were lacking, causing frustrations to grow in all of our neighborhoods and communities.
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The end result has been a wave of bad faith operators draining potential tax revenue away from the city and state and effectively blocking opportunities that the state legislature intended to ensure went first to those most affected by prior criminalization of marijuana.
0:03:14
Back in April, the state took a step forward to finally clean up enforcement responsibilities explicitly authorizing the New York City sheriff's office to seal unlicensed shops and shut down those businesses.
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And we wanna thank sheriff Miranda and your team for really hitting the ground running.
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Once the state finally handed over those responsibilities you wasted no time, and that has not gone unnoticed in our communities.
0:03:39
And while authorities have been active in padlocking these shops, I do wanna take time to point out that This is a problem that can can and should still be attacked from two sides.
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We need to get more legal licenses out the door because the sooner the legal dispensaries dispensaries are established, the easier it will be to shut down the unlicensed business So I call on our partners in the state to continue working towards speeding up issuing authorized retail licenses and to allow the illegal shops to get up and running, not only to deny room for these bad faith factors, but to fulfill the policy goals behind legalization law.
0:04:14
In the first place.
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We need to avoid what happened in California.
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Some 7 years after legalizing recreational marijuana, the black market has now eclipsed the regulated and taxed marketplace effectively undermining the legal industry entirely.
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Unless we get these new licenses out the door as soon as possible and get serious about the illegal weed shops that continue to masquerade as legitimate dispensaries, these new retail licenses will effectively be worthless and tax revenue will be a far cry from what we were promised and what we anticipate.
0:04:46
So today, my questions will speak to the headcount and other budgetary resources used for the enforcement efforts, the count and cost of these unlicensed shops continuing to operate and more.
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Thanks, sheriff Miranda again, and his team for joining us today at this hearing.
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And I look forward to hearing from you on these issues.
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Quickly before we begin, I wanna thank my finance team, senior analyst, Michael Sherman, committee counsel, Mike Tumi, my senior adviser, John Yeden, and the entire staff from the committee on oversight investigation for all their hard work behind the scenes putting this hearing together.
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With that, I'll turn it back over to chair Brewer.
0:05:19
Thank you.
Gale A. Brewer
0:05:20
Thank you very much.
