Exclusive | Medical pot pioneer rips un-American Hochul, NY regulators for allegedly thwarting businesses: Want to destroy us
A pioneer of New York’s legal marijuana sales to medical patients has accused Gov.Kathy Hochul and state regulators of being “un-American” for allegedly thwarting his and other such businesses.Boris Jordan, a Long Island native, is the founder and CEO of Curaleaf, one of the first companies to open “seed to sale” cannabis stores for medical patients in New York a decade ago.But he said that in recent years, Hochul and the state’s cannabis regulators have been hell-bent on “destroying” his and other such businesses by making it more difficult for them to get licenses to sell marijuana to healthy adult customers, too, as now allowed by law.“New York is directly targeting and hurting our business,” Jordan told The Post.
“New York asked us to invest in the market, and now they’re trying to bring us down.“It’s very un-American, to be honest.It’s not the country I grew up in.
They asked us to invest, and now they want to destroy us,” he said.Medical cannabis firms have to pony up money to the state when they want to convert one of their stores for regular adult-use sales — and that figure could hit up to a whopping $15 million for just three conversions, depending on a business’s revenue.Six of the 10 original, licensed, medical marijuana firms in the state have opted not to enter the regular adult use market because of the added costs, said Jordan — who has five cannabis dispensaries is New York, including one in the city, in Forest Hills, Queens.State regulators have failed to crack down on illicit weed being imported from other states that are ending up in licensed stores, too, he said.All cannabis sold in the Empire State must be grown and cultivated in New York under its “seed to sale” law.But some farmers and sellers are skirting the law by using cheaper out-of-state seeds and weed, making it more difficult for law-abiding cannabis operators to compete on pricing, Jordan said.“The state is not doing anything about it,”...