Southampton’s native weed legal guidelines simply went up in smoke as state hashish officers blasted the city’s overly stringent guidelines as unlawful and designed to deliberately block authorized dispensaries from ever opening.
The unanimous choice by the state’s Hashish Management Board on Monday successfully torched Southampton’s native allowing scheme — a system that state-licensed hashish enterprise house owners Marquis Hayes and Kim Stetz, of Brown Budda dispensary, sued the city over.
That they had accused city officers of intentionally weaponizing zoning legal guidelines and allow necessities to stall their state-approved enterprise and maintain authorized hashish operations out of the tony Lengthy Island coastal city.
“The board’s motion delivers a powerful rebuke to native officers who as soon as claimed, ‘we reside right here, the state doesn’t reside right here,” Christian Killoran, the lawyer for Brown Budda, mentioned in a press release.
“The state has now made its place unmistakably clear — Southampton is in New York. You reside right here. We reside right here. The choice affirms that state legislation – not native politics – governs hashish regulation and that municipalities can’t rewrite the principles to suit their very own agendas.”
The ruling discovered Southampton’s native code to be “unreasonably impracticable” beneath state legislation and formally voided a number of sections of its zoning code, together with the city’s requirement for special-use permits and distance buffers.
State regulators additionally struck down the city’s makes an attempt to control weed deliveries inside its borders — calling any earlier effort to take action “fully exterior of municipal authority.”
The choice is a crippling setback for Southampton, which has spent the previous three years tightening its hashish legal guidelines and dragging out approvals regardless of by no means opting out of the state’s 2021 legalization framework, which solely required a vote of its native authorities.
For the Brown Budda dispensary, the choice additionally marks a long-awaited breakthrough after years of irritating and costly court docket battles with the city — whereas ready to lastly open its doorways.
“I believed I used to be about to grab the American Dream. As a substitute, the City of Southampton turned it right into a nightmare,” mentioned Hayes, Brown Budda’s founder.
The Southampton-based dispensary — one of many first to be licensed within the state and the primary permitted on Lengthy Island in 2022 — has misplaced tens of millions in potential income and expired hashish product whereas sinking lots of of 1000’s extra into hire, charges and authorized prices.
“Brown Budda New York has been able to open its doorways since day one,” Hayes added. “The nightmare is sort of over.”
The ruling may even have sweeping implications past simply the Hamptons, setting a statewide precedent that cities can’t use native zoning legal guidelines to get in the way in which of state-licensed companies after lacking the opt-out deadline.
It additionally reinforces Albany’s stance that marijuana regulation rests fully with the state — and affirms native municipalities can’t micromanage who can promote or ship hashish inside its borders.
Southampton City Lawyer James Burke didn’t reply to a request for remark.
