What's inside your licensed pot? 7 On Your Side gets a behind-the-scenes look
Two licensed marijuana dispensaries have opened in New York, and there's a potential for more than 100 others to open by the end of the year.
But there are hundreds of pot shops already lining the streets of New York City where people can buy drugs, so what's the difference?
State officials say there's a big difference between what's being sold at licensed versus unlicensed stores.
You can find out which stores are licensed by the state online.
7 On Your Side traveled to a farm and production facility in Orange County to get a behind-the-scenes look at licensed marijuana.
Eran Sherin is the CEO and founder of UrbanXtracts in the village of Warwick.
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"We're really starting to produce and roll out the products," Sherin said.
He has a license to grow marijuana and he also has a state license to produce the products. Anything that's sold in New York has to be grown in New York.
Sherin hired a cultivator to pick and clone strains that will grow well for farmers.
"We take our genetics very seriously," said Shawn Bedard, Head of Cultivation for UrbanXtracts. "It's important to give them love and care knowing people use this with a respect for their body."
Once licensed farmers plant the crops in their fields and they sprout to full growth, they're then clipped and brought to the production facility nearby in Warwick.
Inside the facility, workers scoop up the dried cannabis, where it then goes through the extraction process and is made into products. The facility has the ability to produce up to 75,000 vape pens a day.
One of the biggest differences with licensed marijuana is this - it's tested along the entire process. It's tested to make sure it has the right amount of THC and that there are no harmful chemicals and pesticides in the products.
"You don't want your product to be five times stronger than what your label says, you need label accuracy because this is a pretty powerful substance when consumed orally," said Jonathan DeMart of UrbanXtracts.
If you use your iPhone, you can scan the QR code of the product the company sells and find all of the product's testing and production information.
"We have QR codes that take you directly to our website that tell you which strains were grown where, where it was grown, how it was grown and we supply those third party tests that verify that," Sherin said.
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