New York’s Workplace of Hashish Administration (OCM) and Hashish Management Board (CCB) made a significant announcement during the CCB’s board meeting on March 2, 2023: the Conditional Grownup-Use Retail Dispensary License (CAURD) program is increasing the variety of CAURD licenses to 300, doubling the earlier allotment of 150 CAURD licenses.
As a short refresher, it is a conditional license that’s restricted to people who’ve suffered from New York’s pointless and damaging struggle on hashish: licenses are restricted to candidates with a marijuana-related offense conviction that occurred previous to the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) being handed on March 31, 2021, or a father or mother, authorized guardian, little one, partner or dependent with a pre-MRTA marijuana-related offense conviction within the State of New York. The CAURD software window truly closed on September 26, 2022, with the OCM having obtained over 900 applications.
As to why the OCM and CCB are actually increasing the CAURD program, right here’s what Chief Fairness Officer Damian Fagon had to say concerning the reasoning: “Extra shops means extra places for New York farmers to promote their harvests, extra comfort for shoppers to make the correct selections and buy safer product, and twice as many alternatives for New Yorkers harmed by over-policing throughout hashish prohibition.”
We additionally suspect that the continuing Variscite case and the present injunction performed a task within the OCM and CCB’s determination. The OCM has been prevented from issuing any licenses in 5 geographic areas, which incorporates Brooklyn. In that litigation, the OCM produced its scoring matrix as a part of arguing that the plaintiff wouldn’t have been issued a license even when the underlying conviction was in New York. It’s attainable that by increasing the variety of licenses for the plaintiff’s first ranked area, the plaintiff can be issued a license, doubtlessly rendering the continuing litigation moot (and, accordingly, lifting the injunction).
It’s going to even be attention-grabbing to see if or how this impacts the general roll out of adult-use licenses (a subject we just lately wrote about!). With extra retail dispensaries open, it’s attainable that the OCM and CCB can be underneath much less strain to challenge non-conditional retail dispensary licenses, however we’ll must see how that performs out. Keep tuned to the Canna Law Blog for extra CAURD program and different New York hashish updates!