Shutting down the New City Smoke Shop in Manhattan was supposed to show that the state’s new SMOKEOUT Act would end the plague of unlicensed pot shops — but it’s not proving that easy: New City was back this week.
“Unlicensed dispensaries have littered New York neighborhoods, blatantly circumventing our laws and selling potentially dangerous products,” thundered Gov. Hochul in April as the new law passed.
It empowered the state Office of Cannabis Management as well as New York City and other local governments to issue stronger penalties against unlicensed shops, supposedly allowing for yearlong shutdowns.
Raids are underway: The Post’s Matthew Seddaca went along on some on Staten Island.
In just over two months, the city has padlocked 535 illegal shops, seized $17.5 million in cannabis product and issued over $43 million in civil penalties.
Sheriff Anthony Miranda told The Post, “We’re finding guns and other drugs and mushrooms and the hallucinogenics.”
At one location, city sheriffs recover fentanyl.
Yet new shops continue to pop up, and closed ones have reopened, some because the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings dismissed their cases, others after just paying their fines.
A few even claim to have shifted to selling purely legal wares.
Meanwhile, over two dozen are suing the city in federal court for closing them without judicial review — a suit that should fail, as the city’s actions are administrative, not a criminal procedure.
But with the judges that New York pols put on the bench, who knows?
In the meantime: Get those fines through the roof, so shop-runners can’t see them as just the cost of doing (illegal) business.
The city can’t afford to play another year of whack-a-mole.