New York officials launched legal recreational marijuana sales by promising many of the first retail licenses to people with past drug convictions, hoping to give people harmed by the war on drugs a chance to succeed before competitors crowded in.
But more than nine months after sales started, only about two dozen state-sanctioned dispensaries have opened their doors. Legal challenges over the state's permitting process have left more than 400 provisional licensees in limbo. Marijuana farmers are reeling because there are too few stores to sell their harvest.
