'The cannabis place': New York and Jersey's fiery path to roll out legal marijuana
This is part one in a multi-part series examining the budding Tri-State Area recreational marijuana industry.
NEW YORK (PIX11) -- Both New York and New Jersey legalized cannabis in early 2021-- but took very different paths to putting pot in the hands of consumers.
Perhaps nobody understands that better, Osbert Orduna.
The service-disabled Veteran is a retired platoon Sergeant who marched PIX11 News through his Jersey City dispensary, which began selling in November 2023.
His Middle Village Queens dispensary opened in March of this year. Both are branded “The Cannabis Place."
"The processes, even though the two states are separated by a river, are very, very different," Orduna explained.
In early 2022, the Garden State allowed an already robust medical market to begin selling recreationally about a year after official legalization.
"New Jersey’s cannabis market is growing and still has a ton of potential," said Jeff Brown, Executive Director of the New Jersey Cannabis Regulatory Commission.
Brown said his state literally and figuratively began bringing in the green very quickly.
"We’re now at 120 retail sites open across the state," he said. "Last year we did $800 million in sales."
Brown said more than 500 dispensaries and product producers on the verge of opening.
However, the New Jersey rollout plan was not without pitfalls. Orduna said most of the market is currently controlled by big multi-state operators—think of them as corporate cannabis. They control many of those medical marijuana stores and much of the in-state product production.
"These mega-corporations had the first mover advantage and had that advantage had an advantage and had it for 12-14 months," Orduna said.
At the same time, local municipalities in New Jersey could also opt out of cannabis— and those that were left had a lot of local control-- with some municipalities concentrating pot shops in the same parts of town.
New York tried to do things differently— preferencing those who were harmed by the war on drugs. However, there were bureaucratic delays and eventually lawsuits brought by those who did not get the first few licenses-- the legal battles froze the NY process for many months.
"We made a different choice," said New York Office of Cannabis Management Executive Director Chris Alexander. "It did create a delay in getting those business operational, and we did not have dispensaries to turn over on day one, but it’s paid off. We do have big operators in the space, but we’ve created a playing field where they have to compete with the smaller guys as well."
New York is now puff puff passing out licenses more quickly. PIX 11 was the only TV outlet at the Cannabis Board meeting in April where the state finally approved its 100th dispensary. New York is on pace to do $200 million in sales by the middle of this year, still behind New Jersey, but an improvement on having done only $160 million all of last year.
Still, there was no shortage of potrepreneurs pointing out approval problems at the meeting PIX 11 attended.
"Please help me. I’ve done everything I’m supposed to do," said one man trying to get his dispensary operational.
Even facing that criticism, Alexander remains high on New York's recreational market.
"We have more black-owned dispensaries in New York than the rest of the country combined," he said.
New York’s slow rollout had another side effect – all seen smoke shops seemingly on every corner of the city, brazenly peddling illegal product. Next week, in part two of our series, PIX 11 dives into how New York is finally trying to crack down on this and how New Jersey largely avoided this problem.