When New York legalized recreational cannabis for adults, it didn't just want to fling the gates wide open for anyone to take part. Instead it specifically aimed to help out and give priority to individuals who were previously harmed by the war on drugs. However, more than two two years after the law was signed, there are just a handful of legal, licensed shops. Meanwhile, there are thousands of un-licensed shops that proliferate across New York City. At the same time, red tape and legal challenges have hampered the efforts of those going down the legal, regulated path. On this episode, we speak with two entrepreneurs who are trying to go down the regulated path: Coss Marte and Alfredo Angueira of Conbud. They've spent over a million dollars getting ready to launch their dispensary in Manhattan's Lower East Side, but have been unable to actually open it on schedule due to various last minute glitches and legal challenges. We discuss what they've encountered in their efforts, and what it's been costing them to go down the legal path. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
Key insights from the pod:
The state of New York’s legal weed market — 3:59
The entry of bigger players into market — 6:03
Article 78 legal proceedings — 9:04
How much CONBUD has spent so far — 13:39
What could New York have done better? — 15:39
Lack of enforcement — 19:43
What role should consumers play? — 21:54
Importance of Oct. 6 court date — 27:29
Outcome of court date (an update) — 31:41
---
Tracy Alloway (00:00):
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway.
Joe Weisenthal (00:14):
And I'm Joe Weisenthal.
Tracy (00:16):
Joe, do you remember five months ago?
Joe (00:20):
No, it's all a haze. What happened?
Tracy (00:22):
Neither did I, I actually had to look this up. You remember on 4/20, so April 20th of this year, we released our first ever narrative Odd Lots series all about the legal marijuana market in New York.
Joe (00:39):
Yes, and obviously that was a fun experiment and I hope we do something like that again. My big takeaway from that, I learned a lot about market structure, I learned a lot about the industry. But my big takeaway really from talking to everyone involved, or lots of people involved in the New York attempt to legalize marijuana, is that however complicated you thought it was and difficult it was to sort of bring in this new market, it's like infinitely more complicated than that.
Tracy (01:08):
Yeah, it can always get worse. Kind of.
Joe (01:11):
That’s another way to put it.
Tracy (01:13):
Well, it is true, you know, there was so much excitement about this last year and then even into early this year, and fast forward to now, I have the sort of latest figures in front of me. So New York signed the law that legalized cannabis possession back in March of 2021. So it's been more than two years and we only have like, I think it's about two dozen legal weed dispensaries, which I think is one of the lowest, if not the lowest number, among all the states that have so far legalized marijuana. And meanwhile, we have more than a thousand unlicensed dealers, which is pretty much the outcome that New York was trying to avoid.
Joe (01:57):
I mean, there's probably more than two dozen within a five-block radius from my house in the East Village right now. And so I remember, you know, about a year ago, I think the first one opened up and it was like a 10-minute walk from me and you had to show some card to buy there and I don't know. And then they just kept getting more, they're closer and closer, and they're all in all of the bodegas now and now basically even though there's supposedly all these issues with payments at the legal ones, at the illegal ones, you can buy them by product with credit cards.
It really is crazy, but it stems from two things, right? There was an attempt to rectify sort of past injustices of the war on drugs by giving priority to people who had been negatively impacted by the drug war when marijuana was still straight up illegal in New York state. Then in the meantime, this tension now is like, okay, you have the people who want to take the regulated legal route, and that's complicated, and then the people who just open up a shop and there's been very little enforcement of that.
Tracy (03:00):
Absolutely, and along the way, you know, again, it's only been five months since we released this series, but there've been all these different legal developments, which we are about to get into, because I'm very pleased to say that we really do have the perfect guest to discuss this. We're bringing back Coss Marte and Alfredo Angueira, they are the CEO of CONBUD and the chief compliance officer of CONBUD, you might remember them from the series. They are aiming to open up their own legal weed shops, but of course, it's been far more complicated and taken a lot longer than perhaps they anticipated. So Coss and Alfredo, thank you so much for coming back on Odd Lots.
Coss Marte (03:40):
Thank you for having us.
Alfredo Angueira (03:41):
Yeah, thank you for welcoming us back.
Tracy (03:44):
Why don't we start with the basics. You know, I mentioned some of the legal issues that have taken place over the summer. Why don't you just give us the state of affairs as it exists right now in relation to New York's legal weed industry?
Alfredo (03:59):
Have you ever seen that meme with the dog in the room?
Tracy (04:04):
It's fine!
Alfredo (04:05):
Yeah, it's fine and everything is on fire. That is literally the state of the industry right now and I don't mean that in any kind of funny context.
Joe (04:17):
We just got the title of this episode: ‘New York City cannabis, it's fine and everything is on fire.’
Alfredo (04:22):
To say it's been a lot of flux is a grand understatement. Last time we were here, we had a lot of faith that the state, because of their vested interest in getting the tax dollars and in their vested interest in trying to fix the social justice inequities, were really going to get it right. And [they] had the opportunity to look to other states and say, ‘Well, what is it that they did wrong and what is it that they did right, and we can make the perfect model?’
We have since learned that despite those best efforts corporate interests will always rule. When you're talking about the country's largest cannabis market and by way of that, the world's largest cannabis market in terms of consumption, we're talking about billions and billions of dollars. And the entities that are MSOs and the entities that are ROs aren't going to sit by the wayside, essentially. And they have been throwing every monkey wrench you can possibly imagine into the gears. So that's currently where we stand.
Tracy (05:27):
So you mentioned corporate interests. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Because I remember, again, from speaking to you and lots of other people for the series, New York's ambition was to do it a little bit differently to other states. They wanted to create this sort of vibrant, almost like craft beer market for the weed industry, where you would have all these local growers and sellers and the money would kind of be kept circulating within the state and that seems to maybe be up in the air now, or being challenged in some way.
Coss (06:03):
It’s very difficult to compete with the corporate greed and I think that's the reality. So the injunction happened, we were sued, the state was sued because they wanted the veterans to move forward first. That was the veterans’ argument that they should have been prioritized and it was just four veterans, not all veterans, but it's these service-disabled veterans. Now, in the case we were intervened by these corporations, a specific coalition of four multi-state operators that intervene into the case to basically state that we shouldn't be able to move forward. And they're stopping the whole pathway of us opening up, you know, because they want to capture as much market share as possible in the beginning.
Alfredo (06:58):
If we look at this not as cannabis, right? Let's look at it as any industry, whether it would be alcohol or whether it be a food product, an agricultural product and you tell Anheuser-Busch that they can't come into the market. You tell Hormel Foods that they can't come into the market. You tell big tobacco that they can't come in the market because you plan on doing it craft-wise. You already know you're going to be setting yourself up for a variety of legal challenges, which is where we're at.
I think Coss touched upon some of the cases which we are currently involved in, which were submitted to the court. The first case was an Article 78 proceeding that was led by the ROs. An Article 78 proceeding is a proceeding by which you challenge an agency's authority, you question an agency's authority. If it was like the DMV or something like that and you want to challenge that, you file an Article 78. That was what the ROs had filed initially.
Joe (07:53):
Sorry, ROs stands for?
Coss (07:55):
Registered organizations.
Joe (07:56):
Oh, okay.
Alfredo (07:57):
I'm sorry.
Joe (07:57):
No, no, that's fine.
Coss (07:58):
Those are the medical operators.
Joe (08:00):
So if I could just step back and clarify a couple quick things. You’re opening this store or attempting to open up this location, CONBUD. You were granted the license in part because [of the] social justice or social equity efforts of the law. Coss, you had served time in prison, so you were, you know, in this attempt to sort of reverse some of the effects of the war on drugs, you were, I guess, granted one of the early licenses to open this. Just real quickly, when was that very initial grant made?
Coss (08:34):
So they, they gave us our license early April.
Joe (08:37):
Okay, and then real quickly, when were you hoping to have the store open?
Coss (08:40):
We were looking to open up on Labor Day.
Joe (08:43):
Okay, now talk specifically about the Article 78 proceedings. So there's two separate ones. There is one from a veterans group and one from the MSOs. Can you just talk about specifically what these new legal roadblocks are such that we're here in October and the store hasn't opened up?
Coss (09:02):
Alfredo?
Alfredo (09:04):
Yeah, so the ROs filed the Article 78 to basically say that they wanted the market opened so that the registered organizations who are these medical entities, who are allowed to open up bigger places and more places than other licensees, that they should be allowed to open up immediately and they’re challenging OCM. So that was an Article 78 that was going through.
Joe (09:27)
That’s the Office of Cannabis Management.
Alfredo (09:29):
Yes, the Office of Cannabis Management. So they challenged that in the courts, and they challenged OCM. Then shortly after that, plaintiffs in the case — and we're involved in the litigation so I would just like to prefer to refer to them as plaintiff and not individually...
Coss (09:46):
But not to cut you Alfredo, originally the law was written for justice-involved individuals to be the first ones in the game. And so the medical operators, they were pushed back for three years. Now when they put this Article 78, the OCM, the Office of Cannabis Management responded and said, ‘Alright, we're going to allow you to move forward by a year now,’ which means December 30th they were allowed to open up. Now all they had to wait was a couple more months and, you know, due to wanting to capture the market as much as they can, they're pushing everything back and they're saying ‘It's not fair, we want to open up now.’
Alfredo (10:29):
And plaintiff's argument who's involved in the case, their attorneys represent some service-disabled veterans. Their argument is that the MRTA, which is the law that passed cannabis in New York, that the MRTA states that all applicants will be allowed to open at the same time with certain preferences given to subgroups.
So their challenge is that the entire card program, which is the conditional adult recreational dispensary licenses that were given to social justice equity individuals, that entire licensed subcategory is unconstitutional, and therefore they should all be pulled. And that's why they requested an injunction, and it froze all the card applicants.
Joe (11:09):
Got it.
Alfredo (11:09):
Now, that creates a variety of issues, right? One, there are certain applicants who've already received their license and who [are] already open and operational. Now we're talking about me taking away a property of yours, you have something. And the removal of that is a totally different legal procedure, right? That's like a 14th amendment kind of thing, right?
Now, absent that, there are also other individuals who are within that bucket who maybe haven't opened up and maybe haven't been processing sales yet, but have an irreparable harm. And what I mean by that? It’s that they detrimentally relied upon the state saying, ‘Hey, you're good, you can continue to move forward, enter into these contractual agreements, enter into this lease agreement, enter into this purchasing agreement, enter into the staffing agreement’ and then now it's, ‘Hey, wait, everybody has to freeze.’
Well, we have debts mounting over $5 million or, you know, $250,000 or whatever it is. Now, there's this entire other group of individuals who find themselves behind the eight ball. And it's really weird because that particular group, the social justice impacted individuals, the individuals who were overpoliced, overtargeted and came from these disproportional areas now beg, borrowed and stole and took all that money that they could from their family, their friend, their 401K, scraped everything together to open up this business, did the application, followed the guidelines, did everything that you told them to do, and now they're left holding the bag.
It's almost like insult to injury and it's almost all over again this whole thing is happening and they're being further impacted. And it's like this kind of a second war on drugs that is just going through a legal proceeding as opposed to on the streets.
Tracy (13:12):
So you have the injunction from the veterans’ group who think that they should also receive priority, you have the multi-state operators who also want to get into the market. Can I ask a really simple question, which is how much money have you guys spent so far on a business which isn't yet open?
Coss (13:29):
We've spent definitely over a million dollars.
Tracy (13:32):
Wow.
Coss (13:33):
Yep.
Alfredo (13:34):
And that was all self-funded and came from our personal businesses. I know that, you know, most card applicants don't even have those resources. We are blessed enough that my business partner, Junior and I, own and operate several restaurants. Coss owns and operates a very successful gym business [CONBODY]. You know, the money that we put into this particular venture came at the sacrifice of our other businesses. You know, so we've given all that we could to this.
Joe (14:04):
Are you currently paying rent month to month on a location that's just sitting there unused?
Coss (14:11)
October 1st rent was just paid and that was for $38,000.
Joe (14:17)
So every month it’s $38,000 out the door.
Tracy (14:20):
How tempted are you at this point to just go rent a van and like park it in Washington Square Park like everyone else seems to?
Coss (14:27):
Yeah, I mean, you know, I contemplated that and it's like, I'd rather sell state work instead of block work, just because I've waited for so long. You know, I mean, I've been advocating for legalization of cannabis since 2016 and still waiting and going through and feeling like every milestone we've reached was a success. I think we celebrated, Alfredo and I, probably about five celebrations every time we went to court or even got a license or even got into the next step, so if our application being graded and submitted and everything. It's been dreams and nightmares, for real.
Tracy (15:08):
Okay, and how much responsibility do you think the state of New York bears in all of this? Because on the one hand, you know, they made promises saying that this was going to be a social restitution exercise — compensation for the war on drugs and things like that. But on the other hand, you know, if the veterans want to challenge the legality of that, it seems like maybe that's outside of New York's control. I guess another way of asking this is what could they be doing better here?
Coss (15:39):
They could have codified card, so the conditional adult use retail dispensary license could have been codified into law. I actually went up and spoke to legislators months ago about codifying card, and they were like, ‘No, the law is fine we don't need to rectify anything.’ And so, you know, come today, you know, in August the injunction was placed, and you know, now we're like ‘Oh, we should have codified card, and this would've never happened and written this into law,’ but it didn't. And here we're at.
Alfredo (16:16):
The state is dealing with a lot right now, right? Where does this fall on their hierarchy of issues? We have asylum seekers sleeping in the streets. The city is inundated by hundreds of thousands of individuals looking to get their slice of the American dream. Housing costs are through the roof for certain individuals. You know we still have a budget that is busted still, as a result of Covid.
You know, on my way here to the studio, we can see the streets in New York are nowhere near what they used to be four years ago. We have really mounting problems here. So where does this fall on the hierarchy of the state? Sure, card applicants who faced a large hill of social injustice are involved. Sure, farmers upstate are involved. Sure, there's an illicit market running rampant, but the state, like that meme, has fires all over the house.
So what could they have done? Yes, Coss is a million percent correct. They could have codified it and they didn't. That would've required a special session and to call a special session to come in to do this is not going to happen. So it would've had to be multiple things tied into that bill. Why didn't they codify it in the first place? You didn't ask it but that's a great question. It's because there wasn't an appetite for it initially, and then they didn't feel like it needed to be because they felt the bill covered it. What do I mean by that? I mean if Congress passes a tax law and says, ‘Okay, this is going to be the corporate tax rate,’ they don't go to the IRS and say, ‘Okay, bring us all the tax codes. We're going to go over this line by line with you.’
Congress gives kind of this broad mandate to these agencies the same way it would be to the EPA or to a variety of other agencies. They say, ‘This is the goal we want you to get to. How you decide to get to that goal is upon the agency's discretion. We don't need to know the parts per milliliter of something in water that you find safe, or we don't need to know, you know, what the exact deductions are.’ We're not going to vote on every single item. We're just going to give you the mandate. And the mandate was given to the Office of Cannabis Management to fulfill this social justice equity component and how the Office of Cannabis Management found the best way to do that was through this card program.
Joe (18:32):
So, you know, let me ask you the other element. You're paying all this money, you're dealing with these legal headaches that you didn't anticipate. The other thing that we were talking about a lot when we had our conversation in April was the existence of all these sort of gray market non-licensed operators. And, you know, we were sort of premised on this idea that maybe there would be a crackdown. Not only does there not seem to have been a crackdown, it seems like there are way more than there were in April and nicer ones.
Tracy (19:02):
Wait, wait. A lot of the trucks are gone, you have to admit. There are more stores, it feels like, like brick-and-mortar shops.
Joe (19:10):
I see fewer trucks. I see way more brick and mortar shops. I see nice brick and mortar shops. So actually ones that were clearly not just sort of a bodega-type environment, but something that really looks like an Apple store or a Nike store. All these entities somehow allow you to pay with a credit card of some sort. What is your confidence at this point that whether it’s the city or the state has some sort of way to, I guess, make sure that people who are not going down the licensed route won't be your competitors?
Coss (19:43):
I think we need to educate the, the public, you know, more forums like this, more forums that the media puts out in terms of what is a legal store. There is a lot of issues with these nice stores being popped up everywhere. And you walk in and you're like, ‘Oh, wow, these people got their license, it’s beautiful in here.’ The general public doesn't even know, you know and I think the more we put out there, and the more ads, the more marketing that the state could do, you know, we could educate the audience, but right now it's going to be difficult.
I have in a thousand-foot radius there’s probably 50 to 60 shops around me and there's not supposed to be one. We're supposed to be the only one, you know, and so it's going to be difficult, but I think we planted ourselves in the right neighborhood. I'm born and raised in the Lower East side and I'm a local business owner there and a lot of people know me, a lot of people are anticipating our opening. We've been able to really educate it through word of mouth, which the state hasn't really done successfully, but we'll see. I'd rather spend a million dollars on a legal store than an illegal store and then be shut down and have that, you know, up in the air.
Tracy (21:04):
I remember talking to someone from the state and they were making a similar argument, like, ‘if you build the legal weed bodega, they will come,’ like the public will eventually have a preference for legal shops. But I guess devil's advocate question here, the longer this uncertainty goes on, and the longer that you have these illegal or gray market stores, do people get used to that option?
Because I can tell you, up until very recently, there was a truck parked relatively close to me, and it was fairly easy to go there, and they had stuff from California that theoretically I might enjoy — if my dad is listening to this, I never went to the weed truck. But, you know, like I got used to it being there. It had the same offerings every day, it seemed pretty professional, it took credit cards. That was a pretty good option.
Coss (21:54):
But we got to reeducate on what you're using, you know. You don't know what this is, they found a whole bunch of metals, they found a whole bunch of, you know, insane substances in this substance that's supposed to be organic and clean and safe. You don't know what you're consuming and it's like, I don't know, buying an un-FDA churro in the subway train. You know, you could do, but you might have the runs later, right? So you just never know and now with this whole fentanyl scare, I mean that's a bigger solution to educate the audience. Like, ‘Hey, we found fentanyl in weed.’ You know, there's been a whole bunch of stories on that.
Alfredo (22:46):
Coss is right, education is crucial but that puts the onus on the consumer and New York City is, if the population hasn't decreased post-Covid, is about eight million people in the greater New York region. That puts the onus on eight million different people and that's a lot to ask of them. You know, and while Coss is right, you eat the Churros from the subway station, you may get the runs, but they're there for a reason — because people purchase it.
Joe (23:11):
They’re good too.
Alfredo (23:11):
The people are buying it.
Tracy (23:13):
It's worth it.
Alfredo (23:14):
It's worth the runs later. People are becoming creatures of habit, to your point, and if I see it there every day, and it may be illicit, I'm still going to go in. It puts the onus on you, where you go into a bar and if a bar is open and you walk in and you order a drink, you automatically assume that they have a liquor license. You don't say, ‘Hey, where's your liquor license number? Are you licensed by the state of New York?’ You make that assumption because we've come accustomed to that.
So I think the next prong besides educating the consumer is enforcement. If I couldn't open up next to your studio and just open up next to McDonald's without a license and start selling hamburgers or start selling wine or start selling anything without somebody eventually coming and saying, ‘Hey, we got to shut you down. This doesn't meet health Department requirements. This doesn't meet state liquor authority requirements. This doesn't meet construction requirements. This doesn't meet, you know, requirements that you're basically trying to market to children. You don't meet any of these things, we have to close you down.’
And in New York City that has some of the most stringent building codes and has some of the most stringent laws in relation to opening up businesses, enforcement is key. And these places that are illicit, that are putting, you know, that are selling products that aren't tested, that may have a variety of heavy metals and fentanyl and a variety of other things, enforcement is key. Education and enforcement.
Joe (24:49):
You know, you mentioned the alcohol analogy and I think about that all the time because I walk home from the subway on St. Mark's most days, and there were literally people, you know, outside selling on a table. And I would never, you would never see in this day and age, someone selling shots of liquor out of the street.
Tracy (25:06):
Excuse me. Aren't you the guy that buys nutcrackers on the beach in the summer? What do you think those are?
Coss (25:11):
You do that.
Joe (25:12)
I have. You know, you're out there on Coney Island or Rockaway...
Coss (25:15):
It’s good.
Joe (25:16):
Well, I'm just saying you wouldn't expect to see it, I'm not saying you would never buy it.
Coss (25:19):
We don't want to take those individuals that are hustling in the streets and making their money because that's their livelihood.
Joe (25:28):
No, I get it. I'm just saying it's just extraordinary that here was this drug that people were going to prison for and not many years ago. And now there's much less enforcement, it would seem, than even alcohol. It was literally the only point I was trying to make. Just from an operational standpoint, if, let's say tomorrow like all the legal issues go away, is CONBUD ready to go? Can you turn on the lights and open the door?
Coss (25:53):
The lights are on, the doors are closed. All we're missing is product. So we we're not allowed to get product, but you know, basically we're turnkey.
Alfredo (26:04):
We would need a couple of days just to make sure we dusted everything and got the staff in and did a couple dry runs, but we’re ready to go.
Tracy (26:12):
How long can you sort of wait in stasis?
Alfredo (26:16):
That is a very good question. Again, we're in pending litigation, so certain things we don't disclose, but we've done our math, we know how long we can hold out and we can continue to be in this run at a deficit until things turn around and I'll say, it is not very long.
Coss (26:34):
We don't have a long run, right?
Alfredo (26:35):
We do not have very long.
Joe (26:37):
Just sounds incredibly frustrating. Both the month-to-month cost, seeing these stores open up and operate, how many, did you say? 50 or 60 within a 10,000-foot radius from where you are?
Coss (26:50):
A thousand-foot radius.
Tracy (26:52):
Crazy. Also, the broken promises.
Coss (26:55):
Well, speaking optimistically, if we do have a great day at court and things move forward, you know, we're looking to open up October 20th. Like, that's what we want our goal to be.
Alfredo (27:10):
Yeah, the court this Friday is hearing the case of 12. Are you familiar with the court process of what's happening right now?
Joe (27:16):
Why don’t you fill us in exactly [on] what we're looking at.
Alfredo (27:19):
So this Friday...
Joe (27:21)
Just so people know, we're recording this October 5th so when you say ‘this Friday,’ you mean October 6th.
Alfredo (27:29):
So October 6th, a motion will be heard when the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit, we implead, meaning we say, ‘Listen, you are suing the state and you're suing OCM, but we have a vested interest, this affects us. So we want to implead into this case.’ So it is CONBUD and three other dispensaries that joined us and we implead into the case. We're the only actual card applicants that are involved besides the state of New York itself.
So the judge asked for a variety of things for the injunction, we requested that the injunction be lifted because it was doing irreparable harm to us. We were bleeding money, you know, we had staff, we had contracts. And this was putting us in a position where, you know, we couldn't recover from and in very short order, we were going to have to file bankruptcy, so we put that request before the court and basically the judge at one point said, ‘Okay, listen, here's what we're going to do. We're going to free X amount of people from this injunction as so long as the Office of Cannabis Management says that they have met these following requirements.’
The Office of Cannabis Management supplied a list to the court, the plaintiffs contested that list, that initial list was 30 card applicants, of which we were one. Then plaintiffs contested several of them and that list was whittled down to 12. OCM supplied that list of 12 to the court and that list of 12 is going to be heard this Friday. We were not on that list of 12, but because we are impleading into the case and we have our own counsel on it, we don't have to wait for OCM. We will be circumventing OCM and this Friday our own motion as well, will be heard to lift the injunction from those 12 as well as us.
Tracy (29:10):
All right. Well, since we're recording this a day before a very important court date, it sounds like we're going to have to get an update from you, maybe before we release the episode and just see which way things have gone.
Alfredo (29:20):
Or we could send you a photo of us celebrating again outside the court.
Coss (29:24):
Celebrating for the sixth time. And by the way, the market has already opened actually yesterday. The market opened to the general public so anyone could apply. We actually submitted our application yesterday as well.
Alfredo (29:40):
For a general application.
Tracy (29:43):
Well, Coss and Alfredo, thank you so much for coming back on and providing us an update and we'll see what happens.
Coss (29:49):
Thank so much. Thank you for having us.
Tracy (30:04):
Joe, I think you summed it up perfectly in the intro, no matter how complicated you thought the legal weed market already was in New York it seems like it's just grown even more complex. The other thing I was thinking about was Alfredo's point about, you know, you can't place the onus for the entire industry on the consumer. You know, I myself am not the best consumer of certain things and so I really think you have to twin it with enforcement and of course the difficulty so far has been what does that enforcement actually look like? No one wants to go back to the days of the war on drugs but at the same time, you cannot have a thriving illegal market with, you know, a lower cost overhead that's competing with the thing that is supposed to be funneling money into the state.
Joe (30:53):
This is the key thing, which is that, you know, the idea was that the licenses were designed to, you know, hopefully encourage people to go that route. And yet, you know, in theory, even when CONBUD opened, at least as of right now, there are going to be numerous competitors who in theory have potentially lower taxes, lower cost basis, are able to potentially bring in product from out of state, which the New York state operators aren't able to do. Payments are challenged still, for the legal operators. Meanwhile, like I said, it seems like all these places suddenly accept normal credit cards right now. So it does feel like there is a limit to the extent to which the market can be solved through consumer education.
Tracy (31:41):
So a little update after we recorded this episode, we spoke to the CONBUD team on October 5th. On October 6th, the Friday, the injunction was in fact lifted, which means it looks like CONBUD should be able to open on October 19th.
Joe (31:58):
So they can do their sixth celebration. Let's go check it out.
Tracy (32:02):
Shall we leave it there?
Joe (32:03):
Let's leave it there.
You can follow CONBUD at
@conbudny
.
And check out the full
Pot Lots
series
over here
.