New York’s Office of Cannabis Management has missed a deadline mandated by the state’s cannabis law to produce a social and economic equity plan, which is meant to guide the rollout of the state’s emerging marijuana industry.
The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act required OCM’s chief equity officer to provide a report to the Cannabis Control Board about the plan by Jan. 1, 2023, and the board was then supposed to provide a report to the legislature.
That hasn’t happened.
OCM spokesperson Freeman Klopott told NY Cannabis Insider the agency is in the process of reviewing “hundreds of pages of notes” from more than a dozen community round tables it held across the state with representatives from social and economic equity groups.
Staff is also analyzing data to determine the locations “of more than 1.2 million arrests to analyze communities disproportionately impacted” by the drug war, Klopott said, and the agency will be submitting a report about its “social equity-related activities” by the end of the week.
The full social and economic equity plan, he said, is expected to be released sometime in “the first quarter of 2023.”
