Mission Impossible: New York City Says It's Finally Cracking Down on Illegal Smoke Shops
UCG. Getty Images.NY Post - An illegal NYC weed shop saw the hammer come down last week as part of a wider city crackdown on such stores: Good — but not good enough.
Western Green, a Queens store operating in flagrant violation of the laws that prog legislators assured us would make the retail pot market safe, got raided and shuttered, its copious inventory confiscated.
One down — 2,900-plus to go.
The city’s in this mess thanks to the total botch Albany made of New York’s legal pot rollout.
The Legislature wrapped that effort in suffocating “equity” red tape, meaning that those wanting to set up illegal shops were guaranteed a massive head start.
Then lawsuits driven by the equity nonsense — many triggered by the incompetent Office of Cannabis Management’s bizarre push to hand licenses to former crooks first — slowed things even more.
Plus, the state’s legal-pot law made it basically impossible for local cops to fight back against illegal sellers in the city.
Add in the best efforts of pro-crime progressives to wreck public safety generally, and here we are: an open black market in weed, with neon signs blazing loud and proud where it used to just be corner boys.
The #1 thing that shocked me about New York City when I moved to the area was the smoke shop scene. I knew what to expect when it came to passing homeless crackheads on every block. I was prepared to not have a car and rely on public transportation everywhere I went. I was ready to spend $10 for a beer, and double the amount of Ohio rent for a quarter of the space. But I had no idea what was coming my way in terms of smoke shops.
For one, the sheer number of them is astonishing. The linked NY Post article claims there are nearly 3,000 of them. But I've found data claiming that there are as many as 8,000 illegal, unlicensed smoke shops in New York. Neither of those numbers seem high enough. It's surely closer to a few trillion. What must have been just a few months ago, two separate smoke shops blatantly selling recreational marijuana had their grand opening on the same block, one block over from the Barstool Sports office. I have no idea which ones shops are illegal and which ones aren't. I have less of a clue how this many smoke shops can possibly stay in business all at once. All I know is that if I'm ever in New York City and am in need of a joint, I'm a paper airplane's throw away from a store that'll sell me one for $10. It's truly fascinating how prevalent they are.
They'll sell you more than just weed too. For a stretch there, and I think they may have cracked down on this a bit by now, you could walk into any of these smoke shops and buy a shrooms chocolate bar. The shrooms bars were definitely illegal. But luckily, the smoke shops had a full-proof plan. They simply stored their illegal shrooms bars underneath the counter. Nobody is going to find them there. However, the last time I tried to purchase one a guy behind the counter told me they were out. "Those just get us in trouble", he said. So somehow the cops must have found their super secret hiding place.
Each smoke shop will also have an entire section of a wall devoted to kratom. Kratom is low-key the most fucked up thing any of these smoke shops are selling. It's essentially legal heroin. It has the exact same effects as opiates. You'll get addicted to it the same way as opiates. You'll go though a withdrawal that's just as bad. The companies that manufacture & sell kratom it will tell you it's a "safe alternative to opiates" that the big evil drug companies don't want you to know about. But the people behind kratom are equally as bad as the drug companies. They're probably worse. At least if you get a subscription for pain killers they cap you at a certain amount. At least there's a "doctor" involved. You can buy all the damn kratom you want. I guarantee that 10 years from now people with severe kratom addictions is going to be commonplace in the United States. They gotta make it illegal.
Sorry for the kratom tangent there. I just really hate the people who sell that shit.
I've never tested the NYC smoke shop waters when it comes to anything beyond that. The old me would have. There's probably a smoke shop somewhere in New York that'll sell you an 8-ball of cocaine, a baggie of crack, a dollop of meth, tub of heroin, and a basket of assault rifles over the counter in a single trip. Would let you throw it all on a credit card too. All of New York City is basically just an open air drug market.
Either way, Mayor Eric Adams claims that these illegal pot shop's days are numbered. To me that seems like a futile task. You're not just going to get illegal marijuana off the streets of New York. Even if you manage get it out of the shops, it's just going to pop up somewhere else. Whether it's just a different store, or some dude brazenly selling it off a folding table in Washington Square Park. I can't help but think there are better things we could be spending our resources on. And at the rate these shops go up, for every place they manage to shut down, a new one is just going to pop up somewhere else.
Whatever Mayor Adams. Good luck getting that pot off the streets. That'll get this city back to it's glory days. Keep those drugs out of the children's bedrooms.
