New York Issues Retail Dispensary Guidance

New York regulators last week released regulations for Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary licenses, including guidance for in-house, drive-thru, and delivery options. The rules include recordkeeping requirements and those for staffing, training, and hours of operation. 

The rules also outline packaging restrictions, prohibiting fonts and images that could be “attractive to individuals under 21,” and products with “similarities to products or words that refer to products that are commonly associated with or marketed in a manner so as to be attractive to individuals,” according to the guidance. The regulations also ban the terms “candy” or “candies,” including variants such as “kandy” or “kandeez,” unless it is a strain name or licensee’s name, entity’s name, or doing business as name.     

Licensees are also barred from misrepresenting their retail dispensary as a medical cannabis dispensary, and as such are unable to use the terms “drug,” “drug store,” “medicine,” “apothecary,” “doctor,” or “pharmacy”; including similar terms like “pharma-” or “medi-” along terms not included on the list that have the same meaning as the terms on the list. 

Adult-use cannabis businesses will only be allowed to operate from 8:00am until midnight unless municipalities approve a local ordinance allowing operation beyond those hours. 

Licensed businesses will be allowed cannabis products only obtain from licensed distributors, hemp products, cannabis paraphernalia, stationary, gifts, and “other minor incidentals,” and branded merchandise for the licensee’s brand (in adult sizes only). Businesses will not be allowed to sell branded merchandise for other brands and cannabis giveaway promotions are also banned.  

Dispensaries cannot be on the same street or within 500 feet of school grounds, nor on the same street or within 200 feet of a building exclusively used as a house of worship, the guidance states. 

State officials have not yet provided a firm date for adult-use cannabis sales to commence; however, earlier this month New York Office of Cannabis Management Director Chris Alexander indicated they could begin before the year’s end.