Nearly 20 months after New York legalized recreational marijuana, consumers still have no legal way to obtain it. If you live in New York City, that may come as a surprise, since there is no shortage of merchants who will happily and openly sell you marijuana. But none of those retailers, who sell weed from storefronts as well as trucks and sidewalk tables, is licensed by the state. Regulators are still improbably promising that legal retailing will begin by the end of the year—i.e., within the next month or so.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers are not yet allowed to grow their own marijuana for recreational use, because legislators decreed that regulations governing home cultivation won't be issued until 18 months after licensed pot shops start opening. That delay was designed to help legal retailers attract customers and displace the black market. But the slow pace of the licensing process has had the opposite effect, inviting illegal dealers to fill the supply gap and dimming the prospects of competing with them.
