NYC NOW - August 13, 2024: Midday News

Episode Date: August 13, 2024

Vehicles with unreadable license plates, which can be used to evade tolls and traffic fines, have increased by 30% since April, costing New York City up to $200 million a year in lost revenue. Meanwhile, applications for gun permits in New Jersey have surged since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered states with strict regulations to ease restrictions in 2022. Plus, nearly 1,000 unlicensed marijuana shops in New York City have been shut down since May, leaving many customers searching for new places to buy recreational cannabis. We hear from WNYC reporter Caroline Lewis on the state of New York’s marijuana market.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WMYC. It's Tuesday, August 13th. Here's the Midday News from Lance Lucky. A new report finds an already vexing problem is getting worse. Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine says cars with unreadable plates are costing the city about $200 million annually. He says it's too easy to hide license plates. It's obvious.

You can date the moment. This became a serious problem to the transition to electronic enforcement and electronic tolls. Levine wants to double fines, start towing cars with so-called ghost plates, and start putting points on driver's licenses. Applications for permits to carry guns have spiked in New Jersey since 2022. That's when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered states with strict regulations to make it easier for people to arm themselves. WN.YC. Samantha Max reports.

State data show New Jersey has received about 41,000 new applications, from people who want to carry a gun in public in the last two years and hundreds more renewals. Officials have approved more than 99% of those applications. Lateef Dickerson teaches gun safety classes for applicants at the New Jersey Firearms Academy. Most people are getting the carry license just for self-defense, home protection. New Jersey updated its requirements for gun permits after the Supreme Court ruling and also, also banned firearms in some places, including arenas and protests. 76 degrees. This is WNYC.

Stay close. There's more after the break. On WNYC, I'm Sean Carlson. Nearly a thousand unlicensed marijuana shops in New York City have been shut down since early May, leaving many of their customers searching for a new place to buy recreational cannabis. And with their local weed bodega shuttered, consumers may be turning to the state's legal market. But others say they still aren't sure which dispensaries are state sanctioned and what sets legal products apart. WDWIC's Caroline Lewis joins us to talk about the current state of New York's marijuana market and how to navigate it. Okay, Caroline, first of all, let's talk about the crackdown. How did the city shut down so many shops so quickly?

So the city and state have been under pressure for a while now to shut down the thousands of unlicensed shops that have popped up across New York since marijuana was legalized in 2020. And for years, these efforts just were not very successful. But then the state law changed a few months ago, and now local law enforcement can just padlock the shops, suspected of selling cannabis right away on the first inspection without a court order. The owners of these shops are entitled to an administrative hearing after the fact, but it's ultimately up to the sheriff whether they stay closed.

And some of these business owners are fighting back against the crackdown in court, saying it violates their due process, rights, but so far they have not been able to slow down the pace of enforcement. So what are cannabis consumers doing now that all these shops are getting shut down? Well, I've spoken to several legal dispensary owners who say they are actually getting a big boost in business because all of these displaced customers are now starting to make their way to nearby legal shops. And state officials also say legal sales are up, in part because of the crackdown. I actually spoke to one person, Amari Johnson, who was on his way to a cannabis shop

in Soho as it was being shut down by the police. And he said he started going there before he turned 21, which is the legal age to buy cannabis. And he just kept going because he liked the products. Yeah, I'll definitely try to be more aware of like where I get my weed now, you know, because you never know where it's coming from or who you're getting it from or what can happen like this. It's crazy, you know. But some legal dispensary owners I spoke to said a lot of customers still have trouble telling the difference between licensed and unlicensed shop. And they're even skeptical sometimes when stores say they have a license. Yeah, what is the deal with that? Why is it still so difficult for some people to figure out which

dispensaries are licensed? I think part of the problem is there are just still so many more unlicensed shops than state-approved dispensaries in New York, even amidst this crackdown. You know, there are about 60 legal dispensaries across the five boroughs, and the city sheriff's office estimated there were about 3,000 unlicensed shops at the time the crackdown started in early may. And while some of those unlicensed shops are, you know, just look like regular bodegas and are obviously selling unregulated products, others have invested in really nice displays or posted security at the door. And they may even falsely say they have a license if customers ask. So that can really throw people off. What about people who search for dispensaries online? Like if I went and Googled this right

now, what comes up? Searching online also doesn't necessarily clear things up. You know, platforms like Google and Yelp list unlicensed dispensaries alongside the legal ones, and people have told me that makes things even more confusing. I spoke to Caitlin Ferrer inside a legal shop called Verdi in Chelsea, which she found through Google, but she said the internet had led her to unlicensed shops in the past. Even if you like Google it, they come up. And so then I just assumed like, oh, well, if it's coming up on Google, then it must be licensed, so whatever. But the quality of the product, you can tell it's like very different. Some cannabis users say they have their own methods of figuring out if a shop is legal,

but they don't always sound that reliable. This is what Jay Patel in Washington Square Park said he looks for. Amount of reviews on Google Maps. So if it's under 1,000 or something, like 500 even, then it's usually one of the pop-up ones that are probably illegal. Interesting. Very, very scientific method. Right.

Of course, there are also new legal shops opening up all the time that might not have that many reviews, and there might be popular unlicensed ones that have been around for a while. So if people, Caroline, are trying to find a legal dispensary, what should they be looking for? Well, the easiest way to tell if a shop is licensed is to look for a blue seal on the window with a New York State stamp, a marijuana leaf, and a QR code. They all have to have this seal, and if you scan the code with your phone, it should take you to the State Office of Cannabis Management's verified list of legal dispensaries. not a website for the store. My colleague, Jacqueline Jeffrey Wollenski, also created a map of the licensed dispensaries that's up on Gothamus now, and that pulls data from the state's website and will

automatically update as new shops open. What is the difference between the products you're getting in licensed versus on licensed shops? So the products sold at licensed dispensaries in New York all have to be grown, processed, and tested in state. So whether it's an edible, a vape, flour, it has to be labeled with a New York state seal, and it has to say how potent it is. And if you're not sure if a product is legal, once again, there's a QR code there. And so you can scan it, and it should take you to a certificate with detailed lab results for the product you're buying. Of course, at unlicensed dispensaries, you might also find products that come in sort of official

looking packaging. And in some cases, they might actually have been produced and tested in another legal state like California and then shipped to New York, but they might also just be something, you know, that's homegrown or homemade that's dressed up in fancy packaging you can buy online. And so it's not necessarily that all of these products are dangerous. You know, the State Office of Cannabis Management has even put out a fact sheet, debunking claims that there's a problem with fentanyl least cannabis in particular. But you're just not sure what you're getting.

Are there some consumers, though, who say that they still prefer the underground market? Yeah, I think there are a lot of people who are more concerned with how affordable or how potent their marijuana is than whether it's state regulated. A lot of people say the legal shops are still too expensive. And some people say they still go to their longtime dealer or buy from a friend because they want that level of familiarity. One other factor to bear in mind, if you look at that dispensary map that Jacqueline made, you still see there are a lot of what are essentially legal cannabis deserts. When candy hookers living in those areas expect more shops to open? Well, there's recently been a big shakeup in the State Office of Cannabis Management because Governor Kathy Hochel has been really unhappy with the pace of licensing.

She's putting a lot of pressure on regulators to approve new shops as quickly as possible. But of course, even after they get licensed, it takes a while for shops to get up and running. State regulators are currently talking about easing some of the rules on how far dispensaries have to be from each other, which could make it easier for more stores to find a location and open. But I know some New Yorkers are just not happy about the prospect of having lots of dispensaries clustered together, especially after some neighborhoods have already been flooded with unlicensed vendors. You know, I think some people don't want a ton of weed shops around, period. That's WNYC's Caroline Lewis.

Caroline, thank you for joining us. Thanks. Thanks for listening. This is NYC Now. from WMYC. Check us out for updates every weekday, three times a day, for the latest news headlines and occasional deep dives. And subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

We'll be back this evening.