More than two years ago, New York passed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) to much fanfare. The rocky rollout of the program by the of New York Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), including the challenges to its conditional adult-use retail dispensary (CAURD) program, and the complaints being voiced by cultivators (who are sitting on thousands of pounds of cannabis they cannot legally sell because only a handful of dispensaries have opened so far), received a lot of press over the last year.

The CUARD program is the centerpiece of the “Seeding Opportunity Initiative,” which was meant to allow those individuals impacted by the war on drugs to be the first to open recreational dispensaries in New York. It came under fire from existing medical operators, culminating in a lawsuit filed by the Coalition for Access to Regulated & Safe Cannabis (CARSC) accusing the regulator of exceeding its authority in creating the CUARD program, and allowing the illicit market to take root during the past two years and, from the point of view of the medical operators, improperly preventing them from entering the recreational market. In a preview of its revised regulations, the OCM has attempted to address some of these concerns.

Medical Operators