What is the New York Office of Cannabis Management smoking?

New York’s legal pot disaster just keeps getting worse: The state’s Cannabis Control Board, a chief regulatory watchdog in the sector, is considering relaxing the ban on legal pot shops being closer to each other than 1,000 feet.

What is he smoking?

Governor Hochul was ALLEGED to have cleaned up the Cannabis Management Bureau, the parent agency of the CCB, with a desperately needed probe.

But judging by this latest brainstorm, OCM is still a dysfunctional madhouse.

No shocker, really: The progressive douchebags running there completely botched the state’s legal weed rollout, favoring ex-crooks for licenses, which led to serious litigation, along with a whole lot of other shenanigans.

Legal pot shop owners — still only a fraction of all Empire State pot shop owners — they’re up in arms about the idea.

OK, fair enough.

They followed the law and went through a byzantine process to get the state’s stamp of approval on their business.

But let’s be honest: their concerns are very secondary to the main issue.

Namely, that the real reason for a minimum distance rule is not to help legal shops succeed, but because everyone – including the CMO morons, no matter how hard they claim otherwise – knows that any pot shop, legal or no, it’s a seed. for the wider illness of the neighborhood.

Weed is bad.

It drives you crazy and serves as a gateway drug.

And where it’s easy to access, social decay follows.

Buying from a state-sanctioned seller has literally no effect on this — which New York’s progressive lawmakers ignored when they passed the 2021 law that triggered this catastrophe.

Poor execution, leading to lawsuits by would-be licensed sellers, and the specious, pie-in-the-sky hope that pot legalization would somehow increase “fairness” were added insult to injury.

It’s probably impossible to hope for a complete repeal of legal weed here (barring a major political change).

But what New York must have is real enforcement against illegal shops and tight controls on legal ones.

So how about hitting Above distance between legal shops instead of thinking about a reduction and letting the NYPD and other local law enforcement do their job and shut down the illegal sellers for good?

Legal weed doesn’t help anyone and has been a disaster for the state and the city – as Governor Hochul has admitted.

It’s time for our other pro-weed elected officials and policy makers to recognize it and consider course correction.