New York’s billion-dollar promise on legal weed has gone up in smoke.
The Empire State is set to make as much money from its first year of legal weed as did Montana — a state with one-twentieth the population.
That is: New York’s losing millions in taxes thanks to the painfully slow rollout of legal-sale licenses, while also fueling the plague of illegal shops.
And while the take is likely to grow as Albany belatedly gets it less-wrong, the estimated tax take has dropped from then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s late-2018 guess of $1.3 billion a year to now-Gov. Kathy Hochul’s projection of just $1.25 billion over the next six years.
The Legislature wrote insanely complex rules for who should be first in line for a legal-sale license, while also insisting on a Rube Goldberg scheme for helping the underprivileged qualify.
And Hochul’s Office of Cannabis Management has been accused of snubbing disabled military vets as well as women and minority-owned businesses and distressed farmers by prioritizing convicted drug felons for licenses.
Meanwhile, New York cannabis farmers are sitting on 300,000 lbs. of weed; many fear bankruptcy.
Albany pols couldn’t make money selling umbrellas in a downpour.
Of course, New York politicians aren’t known for their understanding of how the private sector works, or even of how government can operate efficiently: If the subject’s not pay-to-play bribery, most are clueless.
Apparently, they still figured they understood the pot business. (Hmm . . . )
Yet, even by Albany standards, they produced bad policy, executed terribly.
And who knows what damage they’ve wrought on the mental health of the population by legalizing ever-stronger mind-bending drugs.
We’re not so naive as to look for any apologies for this mess. Sadly, it’s too much to even expect them to learn a single lesson from a disaster of their own making.
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