New York City alone has sealed illicit cannabis shops 779 times.
New York law enforcement officials have passed the 1,000-shop mark in their quest to close down thousands of illegal marijuana shops, Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams proudly announced on Wednesday.
“We’re finally, finally shutting down the illegal cannabis shops that have taunted us, taunted our neighborhoods,” Hochul said. “We were playing whac-a-mole for a long time, because the city didn’t have the power to put on a padlock that would stay on. It became a game. They thought they were winning. Guess what? They lost.”
New York City alone has sealed illicit cannabis shops 779 times, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday. Another 230 have been shuttered across the rest of the state.
“We’re talking about a thousand locations that will no longer terrorize our communities,” Adams said. “For too long, these illegal shops have contributed to a feeling that anything and everything goes. Anything and everything won’t go in this city. We’re going to abide by the law.”
Hochul and Adams said the enforcement crackdown will continue, and thus far, more than $63 million in illegal cannabis goods had been confiscated and civil fines of $65 million issued to violators. Sheriff Anthony Miranda also reported that the enforcement task force – Operation Padlock – had conducted close to 3,000 inspections, issued nearly 900 cease-and-desist orders, and also issued more than 700 sealing orders to illegal cannabis shops.
“That thousand number, I’m really proud of that. That’s just in a few months,” Hochul said, adding that as illegal shops have closed, legal dispensary sales have climbed correspondingly. She said she’d spoken directly to several licensed recreational cannabis shop owners who reported strong sales increases of between 100% and 3,000% since the recent enforcement effort began this year.
Legal cannabis sales hit $312 million so far in 2024, the governor said, and she pledged to continue supporting the ongoing rollout of the legal market, which stands at just 152 legal dispensaries. Those legal shops have reported a 72% sales increase on average in New York City, with a third reporting sales increases of 100% or more since the crackdown began, according to a statement from regulators.
Hochul at one point tried to allay concerns from the cannabis business community, and said, “I know it’s a little tough, the rollout. I understand that.”
“We have new leadership at the Office of Cannabis Management, Director Felicia Reid. And there’s new reforms that are underway, to speed up the process, unclog the licensing bottleneck, and streamline the application process,” Hochul said. “That, coupled with the enhanced enforcement, is critical.”
Adams also said that the city’s Operation Padlock and the state’s Illicit Cannabis Enforcement Task Force plan to be targeting the criminal network supplying illegal shops.
“We believe that at a minimum, there’s a well-organized distribution network in place. And we don’t want to just go after the stores, the social clubs. We want to go after the source,” Adams said. “There is a distribution system that’s in place, no different than the distribution you see in any major chain store operation.”
Adams said that the biggest “missing piece” to the city’s prior enforcement efforts is how the new crackdown effort – which launched in April – allowed for the deputization of NYPD officers at precincts city-wide, who can do follow-up inspections on smoke shops and bodegas that had been closed by sheriff’s deputies. That, Adams said, will help the NYPD make sure that the shuttered locations stay closed for good.
The mayor also said the city fully intends to chase down and collect payment on all the tens of millions in fines issued and to continue prosecuting illegal cannabis shops.
Both Hochul and Miranda also emphasized that many of the unlicensed shops were selling not just illegal marijuana but cannabis laced with other “chemicals,” which Hochul said sometimes included fentanyl.
“There’s also contaminated products. We’re talking about so many overdose deaths. These illegal products have fentanyl and are laced with other products. They’re not pure. They’re unsafe. They could kill you. And people don’t realize that,” Hochul said.
It remains to be seen how much success New York officials will have wielding civil fines against the unlicensed market. Some such companies, such as the Empire Cannabis Club, have pledged to fight back in court if necessary, and argue they have the right to operate under the 2021 state law which legalized adult-use marijuana.
But one lawsuit, brought by 27 New York City retailers in an attempt to halt the crackdown, was thrown out of federal court earlier this month.
Estimates of how many unlicensed marijuana shops operate in New York range into the thousands, but with the new crackdown ongoing, how far officials have yet to go remains a moving target.
