New York's Weed Nightmare | How bureaucrats legalized weed to push their agenda.

New York's Weed Nightmare | How pot bureaucrats used legal weed to push their social justice agenda.
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Mar 11, 2025
When former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo faced sexual harassment allegations that threatened to end his career, he made a last-ditch effort to curry favor with the voters: He legalized weed. Maybe he hoped New Yorkers would be too stoned to remember the accusations that he had groped aides or asked female staffers to play strip poker with him.
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New York's progressive legislators had been crafting a recreational marijuana bill since 2018, but the version that passed was rammed through as Cuomo fought for political survival. The bill wasn't just about legalizing cannabis; it was about righting historic wrongs by prioritizing licenses for people disproportionately impacted by prohibition. But in practice, the legislation has created a bureaucratic disaster that's failed both business owners and consumers.
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Jonathan Elfand spent a decade in prison for growing and selling weed—a conviction that, under New York's new laws, should have given him priority in obtaining a legal dispensary license. Instead, he found himself stuck in bureaucratic limbo, with state regulators refusing to give him a license.
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Unlike other states that simply legalized weed and let businesses flourish, New York took a heavy-handed, social justice–driven approach. Regulators created criteria that would offer priority licenses to women, minorities, veterans, and those from communities that had been "disproportionately impacted" by prohibition.
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Even though Elfand had served a decade in prison for weed-related charges, that wasn't enough to guarantee a license. Instead, bureaucrats picked winners and losers, leaving enterprising business owners like Elfand out in the cold.
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Shouldn't regulators let pretty much anyone open up, and allow customers to decide who they want to patronize?
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New York's law explicitly allowed public consumption, unlike places like Amsterdam, which have designated coffee shops where people can get baked in semi-private. The result? A city where the smell of marijuana permeates the streets, frustrating residents who didn't sign up for this level of exposure.
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New York could have followed Amsterdam's model: designating semi-private areas for smoking while enforcing no-smoking laws elsewhere. Instead, the state prioritized social justice and government control over decent policymaking.
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New York's marijuana legalization effort was meant to correct past injustices. Instead, it has created a new class of victims: Entrepreneurs denied the opportunity to compete in a free and fair market. The real winners? The black market dealers who never stopped selling in the first place.
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Producer: Kevin Alexander
https://reason.com/video/2025/03/11/n...