Brooklyn’s not dope!
The borough’s hopes for a new medical marijuana dispensary have gone up in smoke now that the state has refused to license two Kings County joints to stock the product, forcing Brooklynites to travel to Manhattan, Queens, and the Bronx to fill their prescription — and prompting Borough President Adams to slam the state for once again bogarting his hometown.
“It’s just a consistent pattern that when it comes to innovation and support, the governor has been absent when it comes down to the borough of Brooklyn,” said Adams, a longtime supporter of legal medical pot. “Disappointment is putting it lightly, but it’s expected when it comes down to their track record on Brooklyn.”
The Department of Health selected five companies to grow, process, and dispense prescription pot but didn’t say way far out places in Queens, Manhattan, and The Bronx are in, but the two companies with plans to open pharmacies in are out.
Mindful Medical, a Colorado company whose New York division is led by the former owner of Park Slope meat market Fleisher’s was looking to open its dispensary in Sunset Park, while Palliatech, a Long Island company, leased a space Downtown on Fulton Street in June.
Representatives of both companies could not immediately be reached for comment.
Both firms faced stiff competition in the reefer race, vying with 41 other companies for just five licenses to sling prescription pot in the form of tinctures and pills extracted from marijuana, not the buds themselves.
The state will allow each company that did make the cut to open four dispensaries around the state, and they should be up and running by January.
The Beep, an ex-cop, has been a booster for medical weed since his days as a state senator, a position he said he took after watching a sick friend battle chemotherapy symptoms with pot that the man’s brother had to buy illegally. The thought of his friend’s little brother risking arrest to buy medicine totally blew the pol’s gourd, and made him really reevaluate things, man, he said.
The state should have taken into consideration Adams’ early and vocal support for medical when picking which companies it would allow to operate and where they would open up shop, the Beep said.
“No other borough president has actively stated ‘Bring the commerce here,’ ” he said. “There has not been another borough that has been more supportive of this than Brooklyn.”
