On November 16, police arrested two people for selling cannabis and untaxed and illegal tobacco products out of a store on Third Avenue and 73Street in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn.
“These unlicensed and unregulated shops not only undermine the legacy operators that legalization is intended to help,” Mayor Adams tells“but they also threaten the health and well-being of New Yorkers, particularly young people.”, which was on the scene during the Brooklyn raid, that it was the first of many enforcement actions aimed at taking down New York’s thriving gray cannabis market. “This is a danger to the community,” Sheriff Miranda said.
“Whether we like it or not, this is what the industry has shaped up in New York,” says attorney and accountant Paula Collins, who represents several unlicensed cannabis dispensaries and bodegas. “The reality is, it’s here.” But with two markets—the legacy market and state’s yet-to-be-launched legal market—operating at the same time, there’s is also a lot at stake. New York is projected to become the nation’s second-largest legal cannabis market after California, with an estimated $4.2 billion market within five years. Thelegalized pot in a way that effectively sidelined police and prosecutors looking to rein in the gray market.