These 36 Finalists Are Likely to Be New York’s First Marijuana Retailers

New York took a significant step on Sunday toward launching a legal market for recreational cannabis by announcing the 36 businesses and nonprofits under consideration for licenses for the first retail dispensaries in the state.

The Office of Cannabis Management published the list of candidates ahead of a vote on Monday by its governing body, the Cannabis Control Board, that would ramp up the race to begin legal sales in the state despite a legal challenge to the licensing program. Regulators also released 282 pages of draft regulations laying the foundation for the broader market.

The candidates, who were chosen from a pool of 903 applicants, are mostly businesses owned and controlled by people who have been convicted of cannabis-related offenses or their close relatives, as well as a few nonprofits that serve people with histories of arrest or incarceration. All the listed finalists are expected to be approved during Monday’s vote.

The licensing effort was designed to help the state meet its goal of prioritizing people in communities heavily targeted during the war on drugs, for opportunities in the legal cannabis industry. Like the rest of the country, marijuana prohibition in New York mostly swept Black and Latino residents into the criminal justice system despite similar levels of use across all races.

[Read more at The New York Times]