The 10 biggest NY Cannabis stories in 2022
NY Cannabis Insider launched in March, less than a year after the state passed the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act.
In roughly nine months, our reporters have covered every facet of the state’s evolving cannabis industry, including lab testing and social equity, business data and legal opinions, criminal justice and medical marijuana, politics, transparency and accountability.
But some of those stories resonated more than others. In particular, our coverage of lawsuits, family concerns, government regulations, product recalls and a small town’s revitalization were among the most popular with our readers.
Here are the top 10 stories of the year, based on pageviews.
#10. Applications for ny’s first retail marijuana locations are in
Published: Sep. 27, 2022
This story came out after applications for NY’s Conditional Adult-Use Recreational Dispensary license closed in late September and more than 900 people applied for their first shot at selling legal weed in the Empire State.
Getting all the required documents together took some time for Jill Dragutsky, who applied for a CAURD license and chose Manhattan as her preferred area. Dragutsky has a felony marijuana conviction from 2008, her father has a cannabis conviction from the early 1990′s and was later an owner of a food distribution company.
“A lot of the documents, they require you to go back 20 years,” Dragutsky said. “It took a lot of digging to find what I needed.”
#9: This small New York town is going all-in on legal cannabis
Published: Dec. 6, 2022
In early October, NY Cannabis Insider editor and publisher Brad Racino visited the small city of Jamestown in Western New York with Syracuse.com’s Katrina Tulloch – an Emmy-award winning videographer, president of the Syracuse Press Club and member of the Post-Standard editorial board.
The two spent a day, a night, and a morning speaking with local entrepreneurs and city staff to dive into how the town was embracing cannabis legalization, and published a feature story about Jamestown, complemented by a five-minute video that Katrina shot, edited and produced showing a glimpse of the town’s burgeoning industry.
This followed a story NY Cannabis Insider ran over the summer that featured Jamestown’s mayor, Eddie Sundquist, and the steps he was taking to foster and capitalize on the new marketplace.
#8: ‘Good moms and dads sometimes smell like weed’: How the marijuana stigma nearly destroyed one New York mother
Published: June 17, 2022
For me, March 31, 2021, marks the first time I felt safe in my home since the pandemic started.
That’s because the MRTA ensures that Child Protective Services (CPS) can’t be called because of the smell of cannabis. It doesn’t mean I won’t be targeted, bullied, discriminated against, harassed or threatened. But as a parent who consumes cannabis, smell is no longer a trigger.
CPS is the fear and trauma that I associate with every knock on my door. Anyone can place a call to CPS to help a child in need. But the call that was placed about my son wasn’t rooted in good. We were targeted because of my employment.
Kimber Arezzi is a Long Island resident. She is a medical cannabis patient, caregiver and advocate. She is an active volunteer for WomenGrow and Director of Education for The CannaDiva, an online community fighting the stigma of cannabis consumption. She wrote this first-hand account for NY Cannabis Insider to show how the stigma surrounding marijuana can impact a person’s professional and personal life.
#7: Here are the NY companies now licensed to grow recreational marijuana
Published: Apr. 18, 2022
One of the ways NY Cannabis Insider stands apart from other news outlets is our expertise with data. The cannabis industry is rife with this kind of in-depth information – if you can find it.
In this article (the first of our forays into data), we listed the companies approved to start growing weed for New York’s adult-use market. We then added to this spreadsheet each month that the Cannabis Control Board met and awarded more licenses.
There are now 280 licensed conditional growers throughout the state.
#6: Curaleaf forced to remove thousands of medical marijuana products from NY dispensaries
Published: Aug. 12, 2022
NY Cannabis Insider broke the news in August that Curaleaf, one of New York’s medical marijuana operators, had pulled tens of thousands of units of cannabis from dispensary shelves after the company switched to an unauthorized way of labeling potency that led patients to believe the marijuana they purchased was much stronger than usual.
The investigation found that Curaleaf began displaying “dry weight” measurements on its products in July without approval from the Office of Cannabis Management and without alerting customers. While all products in NY show “wet weight” measurement, the “dry weight” method shows significantly higher THC percentages, making the marijuana more enticing for buyers looking for the biggest bang for their buck.
#5: 75 days and counting: NY still hasn’t turned over key documents in $200M fund investigation
Published: Dec. 12, 2022
In early December, NY Cannabis Insider published an investigation into the managers overseeing a $200 million social equity fund.
As part of that investigation, reporters submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York in September for documents that would show how the agency decided on these fund managers, and what the team put down as their qualifications.
DASNY has delayed producing those documents nearly three months, so NY Cannabis Insider began publishing a story about the delay for every day that the agency does not comply with the state law. This article was the first (of many) in that series.
#4: Thousands of units, hundreds of patients: Curaleaf recalls are piling up in New York
Published: Oct. 19, 2022
Following our Curaleaf investigation in July, NY Cannabis Insider learned that the multistate marijuana operator has recalled products in the state twice since December.
The previously unreported information came after NY Cannabis Insider submitted a Freedom of Information Law request to the Office of Cannabis Management.
In a December 2021 incident, Curaleaf affixed labels to the outer carton of its unflavored cannabis tinctures that depicted a 1:1 ratio of THC to CBD, whereas the description on the back of the packaging stated the correct ratio, which was 20:1.
Then, Curaleaf conducted a voluntary recall that involved more than 1,500 mislabeled capsules that were distributed to New York dispensaries between March and June.
#3: NY just loosened its marijuana testing requirements in a big way
Published: Nov. 01, 2022
Shortly after NY Cannabis Insider published a story about conditional marijuana growers voicing concern that the majority of them can’t pass the state’s strict rules around testing – and therefore wouldn’t be able to get their product onto store shelves to open the market – the OCM eliminated its testing limits for bacteria, yeast and mold.
The agency went on to say that labs will still need to run these tests, but “there will not be a defined limit for unextracted cannabis products in the adult-use program.”
#2: New York just dropped guidance for the state’s first retail weed dispensaries
Published: Oct. 28, 2022
In late October, the OCM published guidelines for New York’s first marijuana retail license holders in a 27-page document.
The guidelines cover topics from recordkeeping requirements to required training for staffers to inventory and tracking requirements, and came about two months before the state’s self-imposed year-end deadline to open New York’s first adult-use dispensaries.
#1: NY’s legal marijuana industry shaken by court injunction
Published: Nov. 11, 2022
The biggest story of the year came after a US District Judge the OCM from issuing any CAURD licenses in five of the 14 regions in which the agency is licensing dispensaries. The injunction applies to CAURD applicants in the Finger Lakes, Central New York, Western New York, Mid-Hudson and Brooklyn.
The court’s decision came as part of a lawsuit filed against the state by Variscite NY One, a Michigan company. Variscite sued after the state found it was ineligible for CAURD because the company is 51% owned by an individual who has no significant connection to New York and who has a cannabis conviction in Michigan. CAURD rules requires an applicant must have been convicted of a cannabis crime in New York and have a “significant presence” in New York.
Variscite’s suit argues that the CAURD requirements discriminate against out-of-state cannabis operators in violation of the federal legal theory called the Dormant Commerce Clause. The clause prohibits states from passing legislation that discriminates against or excessively burdens interstate commerce, according to Cornell University.
