State laws legalizing cannabis earlier in the year provided an opt-out clause, allowing localities to prohibit dispensaries and consumption in their communities, even before the state developed and implemented regulations for the sale and distribution of cannabis.
Seven years earlier, I worked with dozens of other California cannabis activists to write an initiative that would create a win-win legal market for all key stakeholders, including those operating in the medical and legacy markets.
Lack of local retailers — only 161 of California’s 482 municipalities and 24 of the 58 counties have opted to allow commercial cannabis activity of any sort — preserves a huge market for unlicensed transactions.
Most importantly, the complete absence of any provisions to incorporate the existing traditional and legacy cannabis communities to the new legal market created an unequal playing field and discriminated against the communities — many of them communities of color — where these legacy operators lived and worked.
The shortcomings of the regulated market created by Prop 64, and the devastating effect that it has had on the legacy community and the legal market in California, is a lesson for other states, even those like New York that have recognized early on the need to create a system that provides opportunity for legacy operators and communities.
The answer is a comprehensive approach to proactively welcome New York’s legacy operators into the legal market.
This is exactly what is happening in California, where legislators favored large corporations over small farmers, where diversity in the legal industry has decreased and where the underground market remains four to five times as large as the regulated market.
New York has pledged to create legal opportunities for legacy operators.
Another example is the current plan to allow the 10 corporate multi-state operators who hold all of New York’s medical cannabis licenses to be the first to open new adult-use shops, ahead of the legacy operators already serving those communities.
We failed to meet those challenges in California — though the industry is organizing for change — but still have an opportunity in New York and other states to create an equitable and sustainable legal market model.