NYC shutters 75 illicit weed shops in first week of crackdown, with hundreds and hundreds to go

Seventy-five illegal weed shops were shuttered in the first week of the Adams administration’s “Operation Padlock” crackdown on illicit marijuana sales in the city, officials announced Tuesday.

The first batch of closures marks a drop in the bucket as there are believed to be some 3,000 illegal pot shops operating in the Big Apple, most of which cropped up in the wake of the state legalizing marijuana in 2021 without immediately rolling out a comprehensive legal market.

In a press briefing at City Hall on Tuesday morning, Mayor Adams acknowledged there’s a lot more work to do.

“They are just getting started,” he said of the Operation Padlock strike force, which is being led by the city Sheriff’s Office.

The operation was launched in response to Gov. Hochul and Albany lawmakers granting the city expanded enforcement powers last month that allows it to close down illegal weed shops without first securing approval from the state.

Before the state gave the city the beefed up authority, Adams promised repeatedly that he would shut down every unlicensed weed shop in the city “within 30 days” of being awarded the expanded enforcement powers. But on April 30, shortly after the state finally gave him those powers, Adams tempered expectations, saying he’d instead make “a substantial dent” in reducing the number of illicit shops within 30 days.