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Assemblyman John Zaccaro Jr., who represents part of the Bronx, said the threat is not abstract. City marshals serving an eviction in his district last week uncovered an illegal grow house with hundreds of plants and more than 200 pounds of flower inside an apartment building.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is exactly why cannabis enforcement matters,\u201d he said, while cautioning that \u201cenforcement is not enough\u201d without continued investment in licensed operators.<\/p>\n
Kagia framed seed-to-sale tracking as the spine of the state’s compliance strategy. \u201cWhat doesn\u2019t get measured can\u2019t be improved,\u201d he said, describing the system as a way to follow every plant from cultivation to the consumer counter and give regulators the data forensics to spot bad actors.<\/p>\n
The unity on display at the Capitol Tuesday extended across the supply chain.<\/p>\n
Don Williams, chair of the New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association, called the tracking\u00a0rollout a milestone for patient safety and urged the state to partner on a \u201cbuy legal\u201d public education campaign. Damien Cornwell of the Cannabis Association of New York said market integrity is what allows small operators \u201cto have a successful market and grow our businesses like any other business anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For equity retailers, though, the conversation cut deeper.\u00a0Dasheeda Dawson of CAURD Inc. said the state\u2019s own data shows only 47% of cannabis businesses are profitable, and the figure drops to about 20% among microbusinesses. Equity operators face an even steeper climb, she said, citing restrictive financing, exploitative management agreements and creeping consolidation.<\/p>\n
\u201cEquity was never meant to be symbolic,\u201d Dawson said. \u201cIt was meant to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n
The news conference was cast largely a celebration, and several speakers acknowledged the state budget remains under negotiation in the final weeks of the legislative session. The proposed elimination of the medical cannabis excise tax, a priority for patient advocates, has not been finalized, and the Cannabis Supply Chain Integrity and Anti-Inversion Act still needs to clear both chambers. Industry leaders also conceded that seed-to-sale tracking alone cannot fix a thriving illicit market that David\u00a0Nicponski of the New York Cannabis Retail Association said is roughly three times the size it was two and a half years ago in parts of the Bronx.<\/p>\n
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What the event produced, instead, was a snapshot of an industry trying to grow up in public. Or, as Jeremy Rivera, who heads the Cannabis Retail Alliance of New York and spent years in prison for nonviolent cannabis offenses, put it: \u201cFor so long, we\u2019ve been afraid of each other\u2019s shadows,\u201d he said. \u201cToday is the first step.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNew York has an opportunity not only to lead in market size and growth, but to become a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":808312,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,64,1749,67587,275397,3344,405,403,50,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-808311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-business","tag-cannabis","tag-capitol","tag-latestnews","tag-marijuana","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116603295095874778","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}