Marijuana has been legal in the state of New York for just over three years, as America gradually softens its stance towards the drug,m Pictured, a ‘420’ celebration at Washington Square Park in New York City on 20 April It is spring in New York, the sun is shining and, at first glance, MARY Fest looks like any other weekend festival.
Marijuana has been legal in the state of New York for just over three years, as America gradually softens its stance towards the drug.On Thursday, the US Justice Department announced it would take the next step to reclassify the drug federally from schedule 1 to the less stringent schedule 3. “This is monumental,”said in a video posted on X. “It’s an important move towards reversing long-standing inequities.
“It’s been a very challenging environment and it is still very challenging”, she said. “There’s the unavailability of traditional financing for this kind of business, and in the beginning there was a bit of a bottleneck with the stores opening slower than everybody anticipated. As a business, it is tough to manage.”Walk around the city right now and you will see shops advertising cannabis in every neighbourhood, on every street corner, sometimes sitting next door to one another.
Marte is precisely the sort of person the state had in mind when they decided to change their drug laws. The plan looked good on paper. Instead of merely making an illegal product legal, the state wanted to make sure that the people most affected by the war on drugs would be able to actively profit from the change.
Crucially, those bogus businesses had a much easier time running their operations. Because Marte wants to do everything by the book, he and his staff must check the IDs of everyone coming in, to make sure that they are over 21, then make them sign their full name on a register. “For a long time there was just no deterrent for the illicit stores, there was no incentive for them to follow the legal pathway because the legal pathway was taking a long time”, she said.
The Office for Cannabis Management , which was created in 2021, has been trying to curtail the problem. So far, it has failed. In the meantime, legit entrepreneurs are still finding it hard to get their head around the stringent, restrictive regulations.