With legal sales of recreational cannabis in New York still months away, state regulators are cracking down on unlicensed businesses that have jumped the gun and are already selling weed. Last week, officials with the New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) publicly identified 52 businesses that have been sent cease-and-desist orders directing the shops to stop all illicit cannabis sales.
“You are hereby directed to cease any, and all, illegal activity immediately,” read the cease-and-desist letters quoted by The Gothamist. “Failure to cease this activity puts your ability to obtain a license in the legal cannabis market at substantial risk.”
The OCM added that the identified retailers were falsely depicting their businesses as licensed cannabis dispensaries. OCM Chair Tremaine Wright said in a press release that unlicensed sales, including via businesses that provide ostensibly free marijuana products with the purchase of other merchandise, are illegal and pose a health risk to the community.
“There are no businesses currently licensed to sell adult-use cannabis in New York State. Selling any item or taking a donation, and then gifting a customer a bag of untested cannabis does indeed count as a sale under New York’s Cannabis Law,” Wright said in a statement from the agency. “You need a license to sell cannabis in New York. Licensed sales and a regulated market are the only way New York’s customers will be assured that the cannabis products they are purchasing have been tested and tracked from seed to sale. Sale of untested products put lives at risk.”
H/T: www.hightimes.com
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