New York is Legalizing Pot. What Does That Mean for Your Neighborhood?
Here’s what experts believe New York City is going to look like in the wake of cannabis legalization.
From weed dealers in the black market to stoners in Washington Square Park, cannabis enthusiasts and advocates all over the New York cheered when then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo legalized the recreational use and sale of marijuana last summer. However, New York cannabis entrepreneurs will likely have to wait till 2023 to tap into what is expected to be a $4.2 billion industry. In the meantime, here’s what New Yorkers need to know about what this change means for their neighborhoods.
Lauren Mendelsohn, Esq., a senior attorney in cannabis land use law for over 10 years has some clue of what New York City might look like, with respect to how cannabis-related properties will fit in with zoning classifications — such as commercial, industrial, and residential — which separates various land use purposes.
“Legalization brings an opportunity for jurisdictions to revisit zoning codes and figure out where cannabis businesses could fit in with everything else and try to bring them out of the shadows,” Mendelsohn said. “It can also go the other direction: everything gets subjected to very restrictive procedures, policies, and ordinances put in place, which is what we’ve seen in many places in California.”
These restrictive policies may contribute to the continued success of the illegal cannabis market, despite widespread legalization but it is still necessary to have some regulations. Andrew Kingsdale, an of counsel attorney, who started practicing cannabis licensing and land use law in New York after its legalization, speculates on how these regulations will shape New York neighborhoods.
“New York will create ‘green zones,’ where cannabis businesses can operate, and separate them from anywhere else they cannot,” he said. “We can be pretty certain that cities are going to say, ‘if you want to operate, you have to do it between these hours and you have to do it in an industrial zone.’”
The land on these green zones are already being marketed as possible locations for dispensaries and manufacturing houses. In addition to this, Tyson-Lord Gray, a lawyer and New York University professor specializing in environmental law and cannabis policy, anticipates there will be more to these land-use regulatory schemes.
“Like other cities, New York will probably say cannabis dispensaries won’t be allowed to within X feet from schools, playgrounds, and other child-care facilities,” he said. “It’ll be interesting to see like how this works, given the fact that in New York, you can have a school on every other corner.”
Mendelsohn also asserts that despite the density of New York City and how neighborhoods are relatively close together, New Yorkers should not expect an over-saturation of dispensaries in their neighborhoods.
“One of the things that will factor in the decision of approving a cannabis retail license is how close the proposed location is to another cannabis store. To avoid this, the state will definitely try to space them out,” she said. “However, they will also factor in what the demand is so a city like New York City can sustain multiple retail licenses within the same 10-block radius, but another more rural location cannot.”
This might be unwelcome news to New Yorkers who are worried about how the concentration of cannabis businesses will change perceptions about the quality of the neighborhood. Beau Whitney, Chief Economist for the National Cannabis Industry Association (NCIA) and founder/CEO of Whitney Economics claims this stigma is really a consequence of the lack of understanding of the cannabis industry.
“There’s an assumption that if you bring cannabis into your community then young people will get more access to it and it’ll increase youth usage but studies indicate youth usage in states where there’s access to cannabis actually goes down,” he said. “Also, people are often like ‘I don’t want a bunch of criminal elements in my community,’ and so they push back on that but crime also goes down, especially near cannabis operations, because there’s so much security.”
This enhanced security required of cannabis businesses is a result of the fact that they are largely cash-intensive business since they do not have access to traditional banking sources. Mendelsohn also contends that this enhanced security can make a neighborhood safer.
“These businesses are some of the safest around. They’ve got video cameras going the whole time, security personnel, and alarms,” she said. “I think that there’s a misconception that this is a dangerous and undesirable business because of the stories people hear of break-ins of dispensaries and robberies because they make big headlines. I mean Apple stores get broken into all the time and people still shop there.”
Now studies suggest your neighborhood might become safer if a pot shop sets up there but on the flip side, experts say that cannabis manufacturing warehouses could drive up the price of the land that they sit on because there are limited areas within the city where those types of facilities can be located.
“There’s only so many spaces that have the volume to hold an indoor growth facility because this is New York City so those spaces are going to charge a premium because they have that monopoly in the market,” said Gray.
The more expensive the land, the harder it is to attract other kinds of businesses and residents to the area. It could also lead to higher property taxes for nearby residents, which fuels displacement.
“I don’t want to see the cannabis industry pushing out anyone from their homes or their communities,” Mendelsohn said. “It would be especially awful if this industry is displacing the communities it is trying to help.”
These communities Mendelsohn refers to are the Black and Brown communities that have been disproportionately impacted by the “War on Drugs.” To make amends, New York seems to be dedicated to uplifting these communities with its social equity regulations — since the state government plans to earmark 40 percent of the revenue generated by cannabis to predominantly minority communities and the Cannabis Control Board intends to reserve the first 100 or more retail licenses for New Yorkers (or their family members) who have been convicted for cannabis-related offenses — Gray believes we must wait and see how these social justice initiatives will play out in New York neighborhoods.
“I want to see social equity programs and these businesses required to invest in the Black and brown neighborhoods where they are setting up shop. I would also like to see more Black– and brown–owned dispensaries,” he said. “Because of the financial lift that it takes to enter into the industry, the majority of the industry might look like it has looked in other states, meaning it’s going to be an 80:20 ratio of white people to minorities, the same way incarceration worked during the war on drugs.”
Gray’s hope is that a substantial portion of the “thousands and thousands of jobs and opportunities,” that New York Gov. Kathy Hochul promises marijuana legalization will generate, will be dedicated to Black and brown New Yorkers. However, Beau Whitney does not think the New York cannabis industry is anywhere close to having all these things worked out.
“Infrastructure-wise, license structure-wise, and social equity-wise, the whole strategy is not close to being ready, so I don’t envision things getting refined in New York until 2026 or 2027,” he said.
