The city is flexing its new enforcement powers to close hundreds of unlicensed cannabis stores. Critics have likened some of the authorities’ tactics to those used during the war on drugs.
Gold balloons announcing the “GRAND OPENING” of Zaza City Convenience in southeast Queens were still floating in the shop last month when the authorities cleared its shelves of cannabis and tobacco products that were illegal to sell in New York. After the police officers had bagged and weighed the contraband and sent it off in an evidence van, a sheriff’s sergeant sealed the entrances to the store with padlocks.
Similar scenes have played out across New York City as a task force led by the Sheriff’s Office has flexed its new emergency powers to lock down unlicensed cannabis shops, which officials recently estimated outnumbered licensed retailers in the city by about 2,900 to 62. From May 7 to June 3, inspection teams closed 311 stores, seized $10.4 million worth of products and issued $23.4 million in fines, according to the mayor’s office. An additional 325 shops were put on notice.
Previously, shuttered stores could reopen within hours of inspections while officials sought court orders to shut them down permanently. But changes enacted in this year’s state budget and the city code have given the Sheriff’s Office the power to declare the shops an imminent threat to the public and close them immediately for up to a year. [Read More @ The NY Times]
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