It has been more than two years since New York notionally legalized recreational marijuana, and things are not going quite as planned. "Although Gov. Kathy Hochul suggested last fall that more than 100 dispensaries would be operating by this summer," The New York Times notes, "just 12 have opened since regulators issued the first licenses in November."
Part of the problem, as you might expect, is red tape and bureaucratic ineptitude. But another barrier to letting licensed marijuana merchants compete with the unauthorized vendors who have conspicuously proliferated since the spring of 2021 is the state's affirmative action program for victims of pot prohibition.
