Illegal weed busts increase as legal market continues to bud
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By Ryan Schwach
City officials and law enforcement are continuing to combat illegal smoke shops around the five boroughs, and have already seized copious amounts of pot and pot products over the last several months. In recent months, as the legal market has begun to bud, inspections and seizures have only grown, according to the city’s sheriff.
“Our deputy sheriffs have been out in force recently cracking down on the smoke shops operating within our communities that are illegally selling marijuana and other illicit products,” Phil Banks, the deputy mayor of public safety, said during a public safety address on Friday.
The work being done against the smoke shops is a joint operation led mostly by the New York City Sheriff's Department and Sheriff Anthony Miranda.
Miranda, who lives in Queens, gave a long list of inspections and seizures of illegal smoke shops since the task force effort began on Nov. 14.
According to Miranda, the Sheriff’s Department has increased their inspection rate by 129 percent – up from 62 inspections in the three months before Nov. 14 to 162 in recent months.
There were 166 civil violations in the three months before and 285 since, as well as 233 criminal summonses, according to Miranda.
“We have seized, since the task force began, over $8 million in merchandise,” Miranda said. “For the month of February alone, we conducted 34 inspections throughout the five boroughs.”
He said a dozen of those inspections resulted in felony arrests, and 399 cartons of cigarettes and 112 pounds of cannabis flour was seized.
“The unregulated business presents a certain health hazard to all of our communities,” said Miranda.
The sheriff also said that the efforts are about education, informing owners what they can and can’t do and directing them towards the legal market opportunities.
“We first take an education approach informing them about what the rules and regulations are, and guiding them to NYC CANNABIS so they can participate in the legal market,” he said. “We then seize the illegal products, and then we take the corrective action that you have seen with the enforcement.”
According to law enforcement, there has been an uptick in smoke shop robberies, largely due to the businesses being entirely cash based.
“What we're seeing right now is that the storefront is not only conducting illegal sales, but they're becoming hotspots for other crimes as well, including an uptick in robberies due to the large amounts of cash sales they did that they generate,” said Banks.
There have been a handful of smoke shop robberies in Queens specifically over the last few months.
In September a suspect in a Ghostface mask from the “Scream” film franchise and carrying an assault rifle stole $3,000 from a South Ozone Park smoke shop with two other men.
Just two weeks later another trio broke into a smoke shop in Rockaway Beach, tying up the employees and making off with bags of cash and merchandise.
Then in December, a pair of robbers stole over $10,000 in cash from a smoke shop on 71st Avenue in Forest Hills.
Because of this, officials say that smoke shop owners have turned to purchasing firearms to protect their stores, something that the police do not want to happen.
“We do not want you to start arming yourselves, we believe there are steps to be taken to protect both the community and the location and they will be working hand in hand with them,” said Miranda.
Over the last several months, illegal smoke shops have become a hot button enforcement issue, as the city wrestles with the side effects of the long-overdue legalization.
Earlier this month, Mayor Eric Adams and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced a new approach.
Rather than go after business criminally, they have begun to use a civil law to order evictions of illegal smoke shops.
“It’s wrong to have this process undermined,” Adams said. “You can’t just open a shop and sell.”
Bragg agreed and said that illegal sellers are “robbing the very communities that suffered from marijuana criminalization for decades,” by flaunting the tax revenue that is supposed to go back into those communities.
“Without question, in order for legal cannabis shops to be successful, illegal cannabis shops have to be shut down,” said Bishop Mitchell Taylor, a pastor and community leader in Western Queens whose organization, Urban Upbound, is preparing to open a legal cannabis shop in the coming months.
“It's going to be impossible enough to be competitive in this marketplace as a legal dispensary, to have to also worry about illegal dispensaries that are selling without a tax levy, that are sourcing their products from outside of the state and that are using much more enhanced marketing strategies and window placements to create more curb appeal – all of which legal cannabis shops are prohibited from doing,” he added.
Taylor, who said that he feels supported by Mayor Eric Adams’ approach to enforcement, said that he hopes the busts and seizures continue.
“It almost feels like if there's no real enforcement and no real support by the municipalities and the state, legal cannabis operators will suffer the inevitable plight of failure,” he said. “I take very seriously Sheriff Miranda's statements relative to greater enforcement – I believe them and I'm looking forward to what success would look like.”
