The state has approved regulations for the new legal cannabis industry that outline rules for regulating, licensing and taxing businesses and consumers. But it hasn’t finalized a way for people to purchase and consume cannabis products in public, and OCM does not have an estimate of when that may happen.
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Weed Dispensary Queens
In the meantime, people looking to buy recreational marijuana in New York City must either visit a licensed medical Queens Dispensary or make purchases from black market sellers operating illegally out of bodegas and storefronts. The legal recreational retail stores that have opened so far include Housing Works Cannabis, which opened in December 2022 in a former Gap store in Manhattan’s NoHo district; Smacked Village in Greenwich Village; and Union Square Travel Agency in a Manhattan hotel. Delivery services are also available, but only from licensed retailers.
New York City’s first woman-owned and operated recreational cannabis dispensary, Good Grades, opened in March at 162-03 Jamaica Avenue in Queens, becoming the first outside of Manhattan, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced. The store is run by entrepreneurs Extasy James and her cousin, attorney and Jamaica, Queens native Michael James Jr. The two got their license through the first-in-the-nation program created to address the legacy of marijuana criminalization by allowing justice-involved people, like the James cousins, to apply.
The pair plan to open as a “pop-up,” and use the revenue generated during their short-term operation to help pay for renovations of the dispensary’s permanent space. The James cousins and other winners of the state’s Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary, or CUARD, licenses will be supported by a $200 million fund made up of both public and private funds.