New York’s first licensed retail weed establishments are expected to open in early 2023. But a slate of smoke shop robberies could point toward a cloudy future.
By: Stephon Johnson
A recent spate of robberies at tobacco shops in Manhattan point to the dangers that could lie ahead for stores selling marijuana.
At the end of August, thieves reportedly stole $30,000 worth of property from the newly-opened Exotic Smoke Shop, on Columbus Avenue between West 83rd and 84th streets.
Earlier in the month, the Lincoln Convenience smoke shop on Broadway and West 71st Street was robbed twice in three days — with a 29-year-old customer getting shot in the foot during that second robbery, a clerk who was there later told THE CITY. The suspects allegedly made off with cash and cannabis-derived CBD oil, according to the West Side Rag.
In late May, a pair of men held up a smoke shop on West 25th Street near 6th Avenue in Chelsea. In February, two men robbed and assaulted a worker at another one on John Street in the Financial District.
While the state Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) has sent a handful of cease-and-desist letters to 14 smoke shops in New York City, there are dozens more openly offering cannabis products, as are sellers in vans, under sidewalk tents, and on foot around the city and in its parks.
New York Police Department officials did not respond to questions from THE CITY about what their approach would be once legal dispensaries opened. Asked for statistics on how many smoke shops have been robbed, a spokesperson for the NYPD said that “data is not broken down to that level of specificity.”
In states with legal marketplaces, “security is top of mind for our members” said Khadijah Tribble, CEO of the US Cannabis Council, a trade association, who noted that “the regulated cannabis industry in the U.S. generated over $20 billion in revenue last year but is forced by federal law” — which still treats cannabis as a Schedule I substance, so that banks have largely cut off licensed sellers — “to rely overwhelmingly on cash transactions, posing a serious risk to public safety.”
While “there is not a national tally of robberies of licensed dispensaries,” said Tribble, “many state associations track dispensary crimes and have noted a surge in incidents.” At the same time, however, “many businesses are hesitant to report crimes out of fear of copycat crimes,” she said.
“As New York State prepares to launch adult-use sales statewide, we are concerned about a potential surge in dispensary robberies and burglaries,” she added.
New York is expected to have its first legal retail dispensaries open for business early next year after OCM started accepting applications in August for an initial batch of 150 licenses statewide — including 22 for Manhattan, 19 for Brooklyn, 16 for Queens, 10 for the Bronx and three for Staten Island.
Those first licenses are only available to prospective owners who have a previous marijuana-related conviction or a family member with one, a scheme intended to ensure that some of the mostly Black and Latino people who were caught up in the drug war are first in line to benefit from legalization.
Because licensed stores will have to operate as largely cash businesses, security is important, said OCM Executive Director Chris Alexander. But that shouldn’t make running the business so expensive that it forces smaller operators — including the people with marijuana arrests first in line for licenses — out of the business. “We don’t want security to be cost-prohibitive [and] another massive drain on an already capital-intensive operation,” said Alexander.
