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Jeffrey Hoffman is a New York City-based attorney who hosts “Ask Me Anything about Cannabis Legalization in New York” each week on LinkedIn. Hoffman and NY Cannabis Insider have partnered to bring those sessions into print in a Q&A format.
Hoffman’s practice focuses on cannabis industry clients, including licensees in the adult-use market, practitioners in the medical cannabis space, and cannabis adjacent product and service providers. He has a particular interest in social and economic equity cannabis license applicants, and he also informs and assists those convicted of cannabis offenses in getting such convictions expunged from their record. He can be reached at info@420jurist.com.
The following AMA from May 31 has been edited for length and clarity. Hoffman’s next AMA is on June 7 at 4:20 p.m.
What is up with the Variscite lawsuit?
It is being settled. This lawsuit was related to the Dormant Commerce Clause. Originally, there were five regions in the state that were enjoined from giving out CAURD licenses. Those were the five regions that the gentleman from Variscite had included in his application, and recently the state was able to narrow that to just one region, the Finger Lakes region. The district court had already ruled against the state of New York and against OCM in an injunction. I think the state decided they did not want this case to continue, so they settled, and the settlement simply means the party that is suing agrees to stop the lawsuit and agrees to take whatever is offered by the party they were suing. And it does appear now that the Office will award Variscite a future license, not a CAURD license.
What do you see as the realistic timeline for regulatory aspects to be finalized and the market to be 100% legitimate?
So those are two very, very different things. The timeline for regulatory aspects to be finalized – I think they’re pretty much final now. Any day now, we’re gonna get OCM putting the regs they proposed in the state register. There may be a few more tweaks before they do that, and then it’s going to be 45 days from whenever it ends up in the state register. And then at any point after that the OCM has to give us 30 days notice before they open an application.
As far as the market being 100% legitimate, that will never happen. There will always be an illicit market here in New York, there’s an illicit market in every market that has legalized to date. The question is: will New York have a larger percent of the market be regulated versus illicit than say California or some of the other states? And I think that’s an open question at this point. If they don’t really start getting a handle on the illicit stores, the answer is no, they will not.
How is it that someone from Albany can deliver on Long Island?
For the CAURDs at least, while they need to locate their delivery location within the region their license is associated with, they can technically deliver anywhere in the state. It might not make sense as far as the gas costs, but they can do the delivery wherever they like.
How many CAURD licenses are left to be handed out?
For the individuals, they have given out 215 and say they will give out 300, so that leaves us with 85 to go. This does not count the nonprofits as the nonprofits are in their own category. There could have been 25 nonprofits, but I believe only 19 applied. There is no requirement that OCM do the full 300, and ultimately they could even do more, but 300 seems to be their target for now.