Medical cannabis sellers have urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to allow them to peddle their product to all adult consumers — after being blocked from the Empire State’s law legalizing pot sales.
The four medical cannabis operators — who were the first in New York to be authorized to sell cannabis, but only for medicinal purposes — implored Hochul to reverse course and offer them licenses so they can help ramp up the state’s slow and rocky rollout and boost sales and tax revenues.
“OCM [Office of Cannabis Management] has ignored the collective wisdom of every other state with an adult-use cannabis program – most recently Maryland – to permit existing medical operators to stand up the adult-use market,” the operators wrote in an Aug. 31 letter to the governor, obtained by The Post.
“OCM has abused its authority under New York’s adult use law, played politics with the licensing process, and allowed thousands of unregulated, commercial scale sellers to flood the market with unregulated and unsafe cannabis products,” the strongly-worded letter continues. “Today, the State’s entire cannabis ecosystem is in dire need of a new direction.”
Read more at nypost.com