New York City Police Department and state tax agents raided a Manhattan pharmacy on Tuesday and were thwarted from raiding another in an exercise of their recently expanded powers to crack down on unlicensed cannabis stores.
Enforcement teams descended on the Chelsea and Lower East Side locations of the Empire Cannabis Club — one of the largest operators of unlicensed dispensaries in the city — late Tuesday morning to conduct what an official at the Chelsea site described as a routine inspection. feed. After a standoff that lasted several hours, tax agents were seen taking seized products from the pharmacy on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea and loading them into a red van.
Jonathan Elfand, one of four owners of Empire’s five stores, said police broke into the Chelsea store after he arrived in the afternoon after he arrived and briefly detained him.
At the Lower East Side store on Allen Street, his sister, Lenore Elfand, co-owner, said authorities refrained from raiding her store after she recorded a video saying she wouldn’t agree to a search without a court order. command. But she said tax agents gave her and the store manager tickets to appear in court on charges of obstruction.
Police said tax officials called officers to the Allen Street pharmacy, but they left without making any enforcement.
The state’s decision to go after Empire marked a significant escalation in its efforts to battle the unlicensed pharmacies that have sprung up by the hundreds since lawmakers legalized cannabis in 2021. The raid also sparks what will likely become a closely watched lawsuit over whether companies like Empire have legal standing under the cannabis law.
“We’ve known this was coming for a long time, and we’ve been waiting for it,” Ms Elfand said.
The state has been slow to enact regulations and permits for legal pharmacies, and there are only 19 statewide.
Empire, whose patrons pay a membership fee to access its cannabis stash, had dismissed warnings from regulators that its business model was not legal, arguing it was a concierge service, not a salesman.
But state lawmakers disagreed and this year passed legislation stating that paid membership for access to cannabis still amounted to illegal sale. The measure, which Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law in June, also toughened fines for offenders and allowed tax regulators to file criminal tax fraud charges.
In the first two weeks after the law went into effect, regulators inspected 31 businesses and seized 1,000 pounds of smokable flowers, edibles and vapes worth between $9 million and $11 million, the governor said at a news conference last month.
Steve Zissou, Empire’s lawyer, denounced the enforcement actions on Tuesday, claiming that Empire did nothing wrong. He said the officers were denied entry after they arrived “without warning and without a warrant”.
The officers used force to enter the Chelsea store, Mr Elfand said, and cleared the shelves with smokable flowers and infused edibles such as gummy bears. Within moments of their departure, the outlet was back in business; a steady stream of customers had lined up in front of the closed door.
A spokesman for the governor did not respond to calls for comment on Tuesday, and a spokesperson for the Treasury Department declined to comment.
