The pot party could be over for thousands of stores illegally selling marijuana in the Big Apple.
State regulators are plotting an offensive to whack illicit weed operators — and the landlords who lease space to them — with massive fines and closures, The Post has learned.
“Over the next few weeks, you’re going to see a very robust shift in our enforcement posture,” John Kagia, the policy director for the state Office of Cannabis Management, told licensed cannabis store owners and marijuana farmers during a recent meeting.
Kagia said a new beefed-up law recently approved by Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state legislature allows authorities to slap illegal pot sellers with fines up to $20,000 a day, and makes it easier to padlock them.
Until recently, the punishment for possessing more than three ounces — or selling any of it — was a mere $125 fine.
He also said “non-compliant” landlords who aid and abet illegal activity are also in the crosshairs.
“We have the ability to lock doors. We now have the authority to lock that building for a year so that you can’t have anyone operate at that location,” Kagia said during the town hall session with the Cannabis Association of New York State.
Hochul, when she signed the law, said, “These critical enforcement measures will protect New Yorkers from illicit, unregulated sales. Unlicensed dispensaries violate our laws, put public health at risk, and undermine the legal cannabis market.
“With these enforcement tools, we’re paving the way for safer products, reinvestment in communities that endured years of disproportionate enforcement, and greater opportunities for New Yorkers.”
The expected crackdown comes amid criticism of the slow and rocky rollout of New York’s legal cannabis program.
New York state lawmakers approved the sale of medical marijuana in 2014 and then gave the nod to cannabis sales for recreational use in 2021 — but only under a strict store licensing process that critics say is unnecessarily cumbersome.
Last year, Hochul predicted that 20 new legal dispensaries would open every month by the start of 2023 — but only one shop was up and running at the start of the year, and a dozen others have since joined in, even though 215 cannabis licenses have been issued.
The state’s failure to follow through on OK’ing dozens of dispensaries for legal marijuana as predicted by Hochul last year has thwarted the roughly 200 New York farmers who grew 300,000 pounds of cannabis — the equivalent of more than 272 million half-gram joints.
They complained they were sitting on mountains of spoiled and aging marijuana crops.
Meanwhile, an illegal black market has flourished while the budding legal market has sputtered.
Mayor Eric Adams and city Sheriff Anthony Miranda said at least 1,500 stores of unlicensed city merchants are selling cannabis, many avoiding taxes that legal pot stores must pay — putting them at a price disadvantage.
One unlicensed pot shop even brazenly operated across the street from City Hall, before being raided and shut down.
The New York Medical Cannabis Industry Association said there are “likely tens of thousands of illicit cannabis businesses” operating out of bodegas, smoke shops and other storefronts in New York City.
A survey by the group released last November said many of the unlicensed merchants are selling bad or dangerously tainted weed based on samples purchased that it had lab-tested.
The illegal shops are selling weed and cannabis products with packaging labels from other states, particularly California.
All the licensed operators in New York are selling lab-tested marijuana and other THC-infused edibles and products grown and manufactured within the state.
The Hochul administration announced that it will allow marijuana farmers and licensed retailers to sell weed at farmers’ markets, fairs, and possibly music festivals this summer to help move a backlog of marijuana crops and boost sales.
