Unlicensed Marijuana Dispensary in New York Fined $50,000 And Employee Arrested!

A marijuana dispensary in Lower Manhattan was fined $50,000 and an employee was jailed after they were found to have sold the drug to a juvenile. The New York Post reports that the inquiry at Jungle Boys was handled by the New York City Sheriff’s Department.

At now, in New York State, the penalty for selling marijuana without a license is a mere $250 fine, which is widely seen as too low to effectively deter offenders. The Manhattan shop, which is unrelated to the California-based licensed company Jungle Boys, features an identical logo and typography.

Across the street from City Hall is the storefront, where Mayor Eric Adams has been formulating a plan to reign in the hundreds of illegal businesses across the city that has gone undetected for years. Less than a week after the mayor and Manhattan prosecutors announced the borough’s plans to go after landlords leasing facilities to unlicensed operators, the law was put into effect.

One such measure was the distribution of warning letters, which threatened possible evictions to over 400 marijuana dispensaries. The state’s already patchwork rollout of adult-use retail is further threatened by the 1,400 or more unauthorized establishments selling marijuana goods in New York City.

Despite the state’s March 2021 legalization of recreational Marijuana sales and optimistic forecasts from regulators and the governor, only four adult-use outlets (three in Manhattan and one in Binghamton near the Pennsylvania border) have opened across the whole state.