New York cannabis regulators once again received an earful from unhappy entrepreneurs who have been waiting for action on their business permits, even as they approved a new round of 93 licenses of varying types, including from several who openly threatened to sue.
The issue specifically has been the pace at which the New York Office of Cannabis Management has been able to review thousands of business license applications from first a group that applied in November 2023, followed by another group that applied in December that year, which includes several thousand license applications.
The problem is that the OCM hasn’t been able to move fast enough to satisfy those who applied in the so-called “December queue,” which has created desperation among that pool of entrepreneurs, who say they’ve spent immense sums securing and holding real estate while unable to open for business because regulators haven’t granted them formal approval to do so.
“We want answers today. We want to know these applications are being reviewed in a timely manner,” one woman from the December queue said at the outset of Thursday’s meeting. “We don’t want this slow walked over the next three to five years. If that’s the way you’re going to do it, then our next public comments will be in court.”
Cannabis Control Board Chairwoman Tremaine Wright told the woman that the board intends to “try to address some of those concerns,” but OCM staff noted during the meeting that it still has roughly 400 applications from the November queue to analyze before it can even get started on the next group.
And Wright’s attempt to mollify the woman were unsuccessful. Later in the meeting, she spoke again, once more threatening direct legal action against the OCM and CCB.
“We’ve heard rumors coming from within the OCM that the plan was never to cancel the December queue, it’s just to drag it out indefinitely so that we cannot sue. We’re not going to stand for that. We’ll sue anyway,” she said. “You are issuing multiple licenses to individuals while we in the December queue have nothing. Conbud has three stores. Gotham has four stores. Housing Works has two stores. Travel Agency has four stores. Flintstone is working on 30 stores. People in this room are here getting their second store and I have none.”
The woman was far from alone in raising the possibility of more litigation against New York regulators, which have already faced a wave of lawsuits in recent years tied to the Empire State’s recreational marijuana market rollout.
Another license applicant, who said he’d already received a conditional adult use retail dispensary (CAURD) permit, said that in early April he was informed by OCM staff that his proposed shop’s “proximity protection” — which gives him at least a thousand-foot buffer zone from other dispensary competitors — was revoked due to an error by the agency. He said he’d already invested over a quarter million dollars into that dispensary location, but despite trying to resolve the issue with OCM, his efforts to communicate had “fallen on deaf ears.”
“I’ve been trying to contact someone at OCM, because I want to work with the agency, rather than resort to a lawsuit,” the man said. “Work with me.”
Several others also pleaded with regulators for any information regarding their application status, but didn’t directly threaten to sue.
Wright noted repeatedly that the board members have requested clarification from OCM staff on how much longer it will take to get through the remaining license applications, but no there were no immediate answers to be had on Thursday.
Prior to taking public comment from stakeholders, the CCB on Thursday also approved business permits for two cultivators, seven distributors, 15 microbusinesses, 35 processors and 34 new retailers, bringing the total number of recreational marijuana business permits issued to date to 1,605.
OCM Policy Director John Kagia also informed board members Thursday that legal New York cannabis sales to date have reached $1.46 billion since the market launched in December 2022, with $139.7 million sold in March 2025 alone. The high-water mark thus far, Kagia said, was November last year, during which New York dispensaries sold $142.3 million in cannabis goods.
Kagia said sales took a seasonal dip at the start of 2025, which he said appeared to mirror a national trend, but that sales picked back up in March and that April was on track to continue the upward trajectory.
“It certainly looks like the tailwinds are picking back up as we’re heading into the spring. April is already on pace to be the strongest month that we’ve had, based on the first week of sales,” Kagia said, noting that the first week of the month totaled almost $30 million in sales.
If sales figures stay on track, Kagia said, the state could break $1.5 billion for the 2025 calendar year.
There’s also more enforcement efforts underway, said Jim Rogers, director of the OCM’s newly-launched Trade Practices Bureau.
Rogers told the board that his office is actively investigating a number of complaints filed regarding illegal cannabis inversion, prohibited business ownership structures, dealmaking that violates state social equity rules, and “pay-to-play” allegations in which brands have been accused of paying budtenders to promote their products to customers. Rogers warned licensees that such rule-breaking would not be tolerated, and that companies could lose their business permits if they’re found to have been skirting regulations.
“We keep getting credible complaints,” Rogers said. “We are involved in a number of investigations right now where … entities are attempting to own more than their share of what the regulation allows.”
