Day: August 5, 2025

A Bronx lawmaker has introduced legislation to shield more than 100 state-licensed cannabis dispensaries from losing their ability to operate after the state’s Office of Cannabis Management reinterpreted a key zoning rule last week. But a coalition of impacted businesses says the fix cannot wait until lawmakers return in January.

State Sen. Luis Sepúlveda’s bill, S8469, would allow any adult-use retail dispensary licensee approved by OCM before July 28, 2025, to be deemed compliant for license renewal and continued operation “regardless of such business location’s proximity to a school property line,” provided they met the standards in place at the time of approval.

The measure would “grandfather in any licenses that were approved in error” and aims to protect many Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) license holders who, Sepúlveda wrote in his sponsor memo, “acted in good faith and followed all procedures under the authority and direction of the state.” Penalizing them retroactively, he said, “would be unfair” and risk “destabilizing the state’s developing cannabis industry.”

Last week, OCM informed 152 cannabis businesses and license applicants statewide that, following an internal review, it had not been properly applying the law that prohibits retail dispensaries from operating within 500 feet of school grounds — measuring from entrances rather than property lines as state law requires. The majority of those affected are in the five boroughs, with 38 applicants and 89 licensees located in newly designated non-compliant zones.

Some cannabis businesses feel like they’re stuck in limbo

The July 28 letter from OCM Executive Director Felicia A.B. Reid stated the agency could not renew licenses for noncompliant sites, meaning operators would need to relocate before renewal. Two days later, OCM issued a second advisory saying license holders with renewals due during the “limbo period” could continue operating under the State Administrative Procedures Act (SAPA) if they filed “timely and sufficient” renewal applications.

Gov. Kathy Hochul has defended the SAPA workaround, saying it will allow dispensaries to keep operating while a “legislative fix” is pursued. “I will protect these businesses. I’ll protect them,” she said Friday, calling the earlier measurement method “a major screw up” under former OCM leadership. She said she explored issuing an executive order but decided it would be too temporary.

Dispensary owners “will not be exposed to legal problems,” Hochul said, adding that the changes were uncovered after she demanded “new leadership and overhaul” at the agency.

“We can’t break the law. The law is the law. We have to follow it, but I’m also supportive of changing the law,” she said.

Osbert Orduña, chair of the Service Disabled Veterans in Cannabis Association, and whose store, The Cannabis Place in Queens, is among the businesses impacted by the rule change, welcomed Sepúlveda’s leadership on the issue but stressed that “we can’t wait to 2026.”

Orduña has organized a coalition he named “F**ked By OCM” that he said so far includes “a third of the 152 impacted businesses” statewide, that is now calling on Gov. Hochul to convene a special session in October to put the bill to a vote.

“The group is multifaceted. It’s to organize first and foremost, so that we have a collective voice as affected businesses,” Orduña said. “This is a combat mindset. We were attacked. We’re now organizing.”

“This can’t wait until January,” he added. “The solution is simple: grandfather in the licenses that were approved under the original interpretation. If not, you’re destroying businesses that followed every rule.”

Hochul rep: ‘Absolutely no need’ for special session on cannabis bill

A spokesperson for Hochul’s office told amNewYork there is “absolutely no need” for a special session, stressing that CAURD holders caught up in the issue are “legally protected” in the interim.

But Orduña believes operating under SAPA without an “active license” will cause cascading problems. “The bank will not receive your funds if you don’t have a valid license on file… insurance companies will not cover you… our leases are automatically put in a state of flux… New York State workers’ comp will not cover us if we don’t have… a valid cannabis license,” he said.

Orduña said his shop, which is near “a preschool… located in the first floor of a condo building” but 503 feet away door to door, employs nearly 30 people and has contributed more than $1.2 million in state tax revenue since opening in early 2024.

Hochul’s spokesperson pushed back on this interpretation, claiming that if licensee holders follow the renewal steps laid out by the OCM they will be in compliance and be “legally protected during the renewal process” should such issues arise. 

However, the Marine veteran said the instability of the fallout has already caused some investors to back out of ongoing deals with his company, which also operates as a fully licensed cannabis delivery service for Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk Counties. “One day we’re having meetings about expansion, and the next, people are pulling out because they can’t trust the state,” he said. “You can’t build an industry on that.”

The coalition plans to rally at City Hall on Friday to urge Mayor Eric Adams to join their cause.

There are currently 444 adult-use cannabis dispensaries statewide, 177 of them in NYC. According to the state budget office, cannabis tax revenue is projected at $161.8 million for FY 2025 and close to $250 million for FY 2026. Given the industry’s growing tax revenue, Orduña said it makes sense they be part of any budgetary special session this fall.

It had been speculated that lawmakers would reconvene in Albany this fall to address a projected $750 million gap caused by federal Medicaid spending reductions enacted under President Donald Trump’s recent tax reform package. But legislative leaders stated last month they had no plans to do so.

Jeffrey Hoffman, a cannabis attorney representing affected clients, said the SAPA approach is “not a good fix” but “the best the OCM can do” without new legislation. He said the definition of “initial license” in Sepúlveda’s bill should be clarified but that it “definitely helps the open stores” and “could help everyone depending on that definition.”

“I do anticipate a good amount of pushback from folks that don’t like this,” Hoffman said.

A collection of topical political cartoons from various artists curated by the Brooklyn Eagle editorial staff.

The post Cartoon Sketchbook: August 5 appeared first on Brooklyn Eagle.

Brooklyn courts handed a jealous ex a 12-year prison sentence after being convicted of breaking into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment and stabbing a romantic rival.

According to Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, the jury found Crown Heights resident Clifton Turner guilty of multiple charges including first-degree burglary and second-degree assault.

“Today’s sentence holds the defendant responsible for a brutal and horrifying act of violence that nearly cost an innocent man his life,” Gonzalez said. 

According to prosecutors, the incident unfolded in November of 2020, when Turner forcibly entered his ex-girlfriend’s apartment on Pulaski Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant. 

Turner was first seen pacing the lobby of the building when the 26-year-old victim, who was dating his former partner, entered with his bike. The defendant followed the victim into the elevator and up to the sixth-floor apartment, where he threatened to kill him. The victim’s girlfriend, 29, managed to pull him inside and leave Turner outside with the bike he had followed into the building.

The following morning, Turner broke into the apartment again, this time forcing his way into the bedroom where the victim and his ex-girlfriend were sleeping. He stabbed the man twice in the arm, severing a vein and brachial artery, before stealing their cellphones. The woman managed to wrestle the knife from Turner and throw it out the window before escaping and calling 911. Police arrived shortly after, arresting Turner as he attempted to flee on the victim’s bike and with the stolen phones.

The victim was rushed to Kings County Hospital, where he was resuscitated after becoming pulseless and unresponsive for approximately 10 minutes. He remained hospitalized for four days following the attack.

The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorneys Roman Galper and Fabian Smallwood, with support from law enforcement and investigative teams.

“Keeping the people of Brooklyn safe is my highest priority,” Gonzalez said. “Violent offenders like this defendant will face serious consequences.”

The heartbreaking video of a frail Israeli hostage being forced to dig his own grave, released last weekend on various social media platforms, sparked immediate, horrified reactions from Jewish leaders and New Yorkers of all backgrounds across the city.

Hamas — the terrorists behind the Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza — released the graphic video of an emaciated Evyatar David, an Israeli hostage, digs mounds of dirt in what appears to be a dark, narrow tunnel.

“What I’m doing now is digging my own grave,” he faintly says in the video, which appeared in the Times of Israel with English subtitles. 

David is one of the original 251 Israelis and foreign nationals abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023; the terrorists also killed 1,200 people that day. Since then, most of the hostages have been released alive, while the bodies of others were repatriated to Israel.

Reports say around 50 hostages remain in Hamas’ clutches in Gaza. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed so far during the brutal, 21-month conflict.

The video served to reignite anger, anguish and grief from New Yorkers concerned about the remaining people being held captive by the terror group and the ongoing conflict

From bustling Midtown Manhattan to the quiet enclaves of Staten Island, the images have ignited a new wave of grief and outrage, among both Jewish leaders and many others. 

Gavriel Sanders, a spokesperson for the Be a Mensch Foundation, an organization that aims to unite polarized factions in Israel, was horrified by the video.

“This horrific video released by Hamas shows exactly who they are—a terrorist organization that does not want this war to end,” he said. “They starve our hostages, including four Americans, for political gain while simultaneously starving the Gazan populace. Despite the ‘myth-perceptions’ circulating around the world, Hamas uses human beings as pawns for propaganda against Israel.”

Hamas ‘wants to inflict pain on the Jewish conscience’

Sanders’ point of view is that the terror group is trying to attain “global sympathy” from people across the world who blame Israel for the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“Hamas wants to inflict pain on the Jewish conscience while garnering victimhood and global sympathy for themselves,” he said. “This war can end tomorrow. Release the hostages and let us bury our dead.”

Meanwhile, the video is under an enormous spotlight in Times Square, where the Israeli Consulate of New York launched a digital billboard campaign to show how David is suffering in captivity.

Ambassador Ofir Akunis, Consul General of Israel in New York, did not mince words when describing the content of the video, now displayed in the Crossroads of the World for New Yorkers and tourists to see.

“This is what real hunger looks like. This is what truth looks like,” Akunis said. “Evyatar David is being starved by a Nazi terrorist organization that dares, with the backing of parts of the media, to spread the blood libel that Israel is starving the people of Gaza. “We will continue to expose, everywhere and at all times, the lies of these vile terrorists and their collaborators.”

Rabbis and community leaders have been hearing from distraught congregants, friends and family about the video.

Rabbi Gerald Sussman of Temple Emanu-El in Staten Island described the video as “not surprising,” given that Hamas is a terrorist group.

“The video is not surprising,” he said. “People forget that Hamas is a terrorist organization. What is their goal? They’re not shy about stating it. Their goal is that the state of Israel should be destroyed.”

He added that Hamas “disregards” life.

“Their stated goal is genocide, and their method is often cruelty and disregard for the lives of the Jewish population, and disregard, also, for the lives of the Gazans,” Sussman said.

The rabbi’s wife, Bonnie, said seeing the Hamas-released video was “painful” and reminded her of what the Jews in occupied Europe endured under the Nazi regime during World War II.

“It was painful. It’s ugly,” she said. “It was reminiscent of the Nazis, who made Jews dig their own pits before getting shot into the pits. It was a common Nazi practice.”

Throughout the Big Apple’s neighborhoods, New Yorkers told amNewYork what they felt when they saw David’s harrowing video.

“It needs to be posted everywhere and seen by all. Deliberate starving and torture. Digging his own grave, can’t stand straight in the tunnel,” said Efrat Yellin of the Upper West Side. “Where is the outrage?”

Ilana French of Staten Island recalled learning about the Holocaust as a youngster. She questioned how such atrocities, including the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks in Israel, can occur.

“Today, quite honestly, since Oct. 7, these images are haunting and the question remains, how is the world allowing this to happen? But this is worse,” she said. “Nazis hid these atrocities, Hamas is proudly displaying their atrocities and the world. The world is watching it happen and, in turn, attacking Jewish people in America.”