WAWAYANDA – After months and months of delays caused by, among several factors, state regulation delays and lawsuits, Orange County Cannabis opened its doors to the public on Friday.
Owner Howard Libron, a former truck driver, called it a “surreal” moment.
Chris Alexander, the executive director of the State Office of Cannabis Management, attended the grand opening which he acknowledged was a long time in coming.
“We committed ourselves to providing greater aces to New Yorkers to have safer and tested products. So, we legalized them and we have to create the avenues for people to buy those products,” he said. “We’ve been growing them; our small farmers have been doing an incredible job producing them. But if we don’t have this access here, this huge access point in the Hudson Valley, then we’re not making good on that.”
Adult use cannabis was decriminalized in New York in 2021, but it has taken close to two years to draft the regulations for sale and use of the products.
