Mayor Adams and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg put illegal cannabis shops on notice Tuesday that they will face eviction if they continue to break the law.
Adams, Bragg and several other top elected officials announced that prosecutors will now rely on a decades-old public nuisance law to evict businesses selling marijuana without a license.
Under the policy, building landlords and owners will be required to evict tenants engaging in illegal drug sales. If they fail to do so, the city’s sheriff’s office will assume responsibility for those evictions.
“They will be evicted,” Mayor Adams said during a press conference on the Upper West Side. “New Yorkers have had enough.”
The new policy will rely on state property proceedings law, which permits sheriffs to carry out eviction proceedings once they’ve secured permission from a judge.
According to Bragg,the illegal businesses are hurting the legal operations meant to benefit from legalized weed, which include people who were prosecuted under past drug laws.
“We want to give New York’s legal cannabis market a fair chance to thrive,” Bragg said. “Together we can level the playing field.”
The move comes as New York and other municipalities in the state continue to adjust to a relatively new law that legalized the recreational consumption and sale of marijuana in 2021.
To sell weed legally under state law, purveyors must first acquire licenses from the state. The first dispensary in the Big Apple opened in December, but the vast majority of store-based weed merchants in the city are still operating without permission.
Those illegal operations — some of which market pot to kids — have prompted a crackdown from leaders like Adams, who announced last month that the city Sheriff’s seized 600 pounds of illegal weed, and Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan), who recently dispatched staffers to document the breadth of illegal sales in her district.
City law enforcement officials also announced Tuesday that the city has filed nuisance complaints against four East Village shops caught selling THC and cannabis products illegally to children.
Councilwoman Julie Menin told the Daily News that part of the city’s approach to preventing sales to minors should include more public outreach, and in a letter sent Tuesday to the mayor, she and Councilwoman Diana Ayala demanded that Adams “commit to a robust marketing campaign educating the public about the health risks of purchasing cannabis from unlicensed sellers.”