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US: New York State Legalizes Adult-Use Cannabis Will Yakowicz Forbes Wednesday 31 Mar 2021 It will take about 18 months for adult-use sales to go into effect, but estimates put the state’s total cannabis market at $4.6 billion in annual sales (this includes the state’s illicit market). The legal cannabis industry is expected to capture $1.2 billion in sales by 2023 and $4.2 billion by 2027. New York State expects to eventually collect $350 million in annual tax revenue, according to estimates by Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration. The New York Senate and the New York Assembly passed the bill on Tuesday night and Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it into law Wednesday morning. “I just signed legislation legalizing adult-use cannabis,” Governor Cuomo said in a statement. “The bill creates automatic expungement of previous marijuana convictions that would now be legal. This is a historic day.” The law, an amended version of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, regulates recreational sales for adults, allows New Yorkers to grow a total of three mature marijuana plants and three immature plants for personal use, and will allow cannabis consumption lounges and delivery. New Yorkers can have up to three ounces of marijuana on their person and the bill automatically expunges prior marijuana convictions for offenses that are now legal under the law. Nicholas Vita, the co-founder and CEO of Columbia Care, which operates four dispensaries in New York, including one in Manhattan and one in Brooklyn, says it’s time for the state’s marijuana industry shine. “New York is ready to take its place as one of the most influential cannabis markets on the planet,” says Vita. Vita says his company, which grows and sells cannabis in 18 states, is gearing up for the increase in demand from New York’s consumer marijuana market. “We’ve been getting ready for a long time,” says Vita. “We’ve been investing in New York since 2016. Officially, we have 200,000 square feet of canopy in Rochester with plans to expand.” New York will tax cannabis at 13% and wholesalers will be subject to taxes according to THC content in each product. Cities, towns, and villages can opt out of retail sales. The law’s passage is thanks to a years-long fight by Senator Liz Krueger, Democrat from Manhattan, and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, a Democrat from Buffalo. Majority Leader Peoples-Stokes said after an hours-long debate of the bill on the Assembly floor on Tuesday night that cannabis legalization in New York marks the end of unjust and racist enforcement of marijuana laws against communities of color. “Today we’re reversing 90 years of prohibition,” Peoples-Stokes said just before the bill passed Tuesday. “The last time New York state did anything like this was when we reversed the prohibition of alcohol. That was in 1933, here we are in 2021.” The broader aim of adult-use cannabis legalization is to help fix the injustices that prohibition has had on New York’s communities of color by ending the racially disparate enforcement of marijuana laws. “Equity is not the second thought, it’s the first one. It needs to be because the people who paid the price for this War on Drugs have lost so much.” Majority Leader Peoples-Stokes said before the Assembly. “For everything they lost, we ended up as a government trying to fill that hole. It’s time for us to fill that hole in a manner that not only allows them to pull themselves up from their bootstraps, but for them to have boots. This is an opportunity to be transformative to people’s lives.” Senator James Sanders, Jr., a Democrat from Queens, voted yes on Tuesday, citing how draconian drug laws have hurt Black and brown people. “We heard there was a war on drugs but all we saw was a war on the poor,” said Sanders. “The greatest danger is the mass incarceration this thing brought about.” New York’s program includes one of the nation’s strongest social justice components and 50% of all new licenses are planned to be awarded to equity applicants. The state has eliminated all penalties for possession of less than three ounces of cannabis and will automatically expunge the records of people with prior convictions for activities that are no longer criminalized under the new law. Ben Kovler, the founder and CEO of Green Thumb Industries, which has one dispensary in Manhattan, says New York’s legal recreational market cannot be understated. “Big, this is very big—New York City is the mecca of the East Coast and the financial capital of the world,” says Kovler. He’s excited about how many jobs New York’s program will bring to the state—legalization is estimated to create 21,000 jobs by 2023—and for the estimated 20 million customers. “We think the demand is $5 billion, that is a monster number,” says Kovler. Boris Jordan, the chairman of the world’s largest cannabis retailer and cultivator Curaleaf, says New York legalizing adult-use is a “game changer.” “It will start rivaling California pretty quickly,” says Jordan, referring to the country’s largest legal market, which generated $4 billion in legal sales in 2020. As for Curaleaf, which has 100 dispensaries across 23 states, including four retail locations in New York, the Empire State will likely become its most lucrative market. “New York will very quickly, if the canopy is right, become our highest revenue state,” says Jordan. New York’s program is not likely to remain within the state’s borders, Jordan says, as he believes the new market will motivate more states to legalize recreational cannabis. “Connecticut will go this summer and if that happens, Pennsylvania is the last one,” says Jordan, who predicts that Pennsylvania and Florida, where only medical sales are legal, will both soon legalize recreational sales. “By 2023, the East Coast is all adult-use, which is 80% of the population.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2021/03/31/new-york-state-legalizes-adult-use-cannabis/?sh=2f0f93ba395c
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