A lot has happened in New York since the Canna Law Blog’s first New York State of the State. Last year was action-packed for the cannabis industry in New York. With licenses issued and sales starting in 2022, New York got the ball rolling on an actual and legal cannabis industry. We expect 2023 will
Happy MLK Day! Time to catastrophize just a bit. Last year at this time, I kicked off this post by writing: If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would almost certainly advocate to end the War on Drugs. Dr. King never spoke publicly about drugs or cannabis in particular: he was assassinated in
For our first post on our much-publicized series on New York’s adult-use cannabis rules and regulations, we are going to cover the specifics on the license application process itself. The application requirements tracks the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), in that it reiterates the two-tier system separating production and retail licenses and includes evaluation
Way back in Spring of 2021, we ran a series on the New York’s Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, which legalized adult-use cannabis in New York and established the framework for adult-use cannabis licensing. That series of posts covered everything from the available license types to the MRTA’s real estate requirements. In keeping with our
On September 29, I spoke on an opening panel at the 7th annual Cannabis Law Conference for the Cannabis Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan. My co-panelist was the renowned Brookings political scientist John Hudak. One of John’s specialty areas is state and federal marijuana policy. The title of our panel was “Update
If you are applying for an adult-use cannabis license in New York, please please please hire a New York cannabis attorney. It doesn’t have to be be us, but it should be someone who is actually familiar with the licensing rules and regulations beyond just reading media headlines. We’ve written about it before (here, here
Cannabis businesses need money – and lots of it – to operate. Being mostly startups, operational profits are not enough to sustain their business. So cannabis businesses take on outside capital generally in one of two ways: taking on debt from cannabis lenders or bringing in equity investors. Due to industry volatility and a crash
We have been helping people buy and sell Oregon cannabis businesses since the early days of the adult use market. Most of these sales are relatively simple asset purchase agreements—including many for naked licenses—but some have been stock sales. Others have taken place amid administrative enforcement action by the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission (OLCC).
One of the most important decisions a new cannabis business can make is the form of entity it will use. In fact, one of the first questions businesses ask is whether the right entity for a cannabis business is a limited liability company (LLC), corporation, or something else. Like basically every other legal analysis, the
Real estate is on the forefront of many people’s minds with New York on the doorstep of adult-use cannabis applications. And for good reason: owning or controlling real estate will be a requirement for applicants (with some soon-to-be caveats for social equity applicants). We have fielded lots of calls from prospective adult-use cannabis applicants starting
