ALBANY — Momentum is building as a Dec. 31 deadline nears for municipal governments to outlaw pot dispensaries, consumption lounges or both, with an increasing number of cities, towns and villages recently enacting local ordinances barring the businesses.
Ten percent of New York’s cities, 28 percent of its towns and 19 percent of its villages had notified the Office of Cannabis Management as of Dec. 15 that they added one or both of the restrictions, according to the office. Dozens more passed laws prohibiting pot storefronts but had not informed the state by last week.
In some communities, clusters of local governments have barred cannabis businesses. Just north of New York City, a large swath of Orange County and adjacent areas have opted out, which could create a dead zone for cannabis retail within the Catskills and Hudson Valley.
In the Capital Region, localities rimming Albany and Saratoga Springs city limits have passed new cannabis laws as well, though several of those – including the town of Colonie – are only outlawing on-site consumption spaces, analogous to bars that serve alcohol.
But some municipal leaders have indicated they don’t have enough information to know how to vote before the state’s deadline, in part because the state’s regulations for adult-use cannabis have yet to be issued.
Republican state Sen. George Borrello said he has been fielding calls from town board members who have questions he can’t answer about the way the industry will look once it’s up-and-running. In September, Borrello introduced a bill that would have extended the opt-out deadline by one year; he said it gained bipartisan interest, but not enough to get it pushed through.
The Start Smart NY Coalition held a rally inside the state Capitol in 2020 calling for tax revenue from eventual marijuana sales to be invested back into communities of color. Now, municipalities choosing whether to opt out of cannabis dispensaries and lounges by Dec. 31, 2021 are weighing whether to forfeit their share of these taxes. (Paul Buckowski/Times Union)
Paul Buckowski/Times Union
The cannabis office, which will oversee the state’s cannabis industry, has made clear that the opt-out deadline was in the hands of lawmakers, and that even after opting out, municipalities can opt back in at any time. The December cap “cannot be extended by regulation,” said Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the cannabis office. But Borrello’s legislation would have amended the timeline.
“Last I heard, roughly a third of municipalities have opted out,” Borrello said. “The vast majority of them have not opted out because they’re against recreational marijuana, they’ve opted out because of the lack of information.”
Meanwhile, groups that have long mobilized against the legalization of marijuana – including the New York State Congress of Parents and Teachers – view local government as a final frontier where they might still have a chance to reduce the footprint of the industry.
The PTA’s executive director, Kyle Belokopitsky, said the group has recently been reaching out to their 300,000 or so members across the state seeking support.
“We have been asking them to contact their local legislators, their mayor, their supervisor, their town board members, their village board members,” Belokopitsky said. “We really feel that this is a child safety issue.”
In two December emails to PTA membership, the latest going out on Dec. 16, a pro-forma letter to local officials accompanied the call to action: “say no to pot shops.”
According to Chris Anderson, who directs research and programming at New York’s Association of Towns, opt-out decisions could continue to roll in up to the deadline, in spite of the holidays.
“I think there’s a lot of year-end activity. So it wouldn’t surprise me if we see a continued filing rate that’s at the current levels,” Anderson said.
Anderson partly attributes the rate of opt-outs in the state to the “risk-averse nature of local governments,” many of which feel they have nothing to lose by waiting out the early days of the legal industry.
But advocates in the cannabis sector see the decisions as an important, and at times misunderstood setback for the legal industry and its promise of safe access.
“You go to these meetings, you listen to the people complaining; a lot of them seem to be thinking they’re going to be opting out of legalization,” said Troy Smit, deputy director of Empire State NORML, a consumer advocacy group.
For areas that rule out retailers and consumption locations, “people could go smoke a blunt on the sidewalk, but can’t technically buy that anywhere,” Smit said. He thinks this will mainly cut down on consumer access to cannabis that they know is safe, and limit the impact of the law’s social equity benefits.
But one key difference between many detractors of opt-outs and those promoting municipal action is the expectation of what will happen to current dealers when dispensaries set up shop.
While cannabis advocates have long said the legacy market will thrive without retail sales, pointing to experience in California and elsewhere, skeptics of New York’s process like Borrello think black market dealers will continue going strong regardless.
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