Who Gets the First Chance to Sell Marijuana in New York?

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Let’s begin with a query: Who is usually a marijuana retailer in New York State? We’ll have a look at a wrinkle within the state’s plan that can vault some candidates to the entrance of the road. We’ll additionally have a look at an emotional outpouring amongst candy tooths.

To develop into one of many first licensed marijuana retailers in New York State, you’ll have to have one thing in your previous that you just won’t need to deliver up below different circumstances. You must have been convicted of a marijuana-related offense.

Gov. Kathy Hochul will announce the coverage on Thursday. My colleagues Jesse McKinley and Grace Ashford write that the purpose is to see that individuals from communities which have been affected by the nation’s decades-long struggle on medicine get in on the retail marijuana enterprise from the start.

Leisure marijuana was legalized in New York final yr, and plenty of earlier convictions had been expunged. However the retail rollout has been gradual, with entrepreneurs on tribal lands close to the Canadian border establishing unlicensed dispensaries and New Yorkers on the opposite aspect of the state heading to Massachusetts, which started promoting marijuana in 2018.

New York officers, who count on the primary licensed dispensaries to open by the tip of the yr, are not looking for so-called social fairness candidates and mom-and-pop marijuana companies shut out.

That has occurred in different states the place they ran in need of capital or confronted insurmountable competitors from company operations. Chris Alexander, the manager director of the state’s Workplace of Hashish Administration, stated that by focusing early on “those that in any other case would have been left behind,” New York can be in a “place to do one thing that has not been achieved earlier than.”

Specifically, the state may present cash to clean the rocky highway on the best way to opening a brand new enterprise in a brand new business. Hochul has proposed — and the Legislature appears more likely to approve — $200 million on this yr’s price range to help the fledging hashish companies. The cash will go to line up and renovate storefronts. Such help may make a distinction for would-be marijuana retailers in New York Metropolis, the place actual property costs have rebounded because the coronavirus pandemic has receded.

The state is setting apart half of all marijuana-related licenses — together with licenses for growers and different elements of the availability chain — for ladies, minorities, distressed farmers, veterans and “people who’ve lived in communities disproportionally impacted” by the drug struggle. Black and Latino New Yorkers have been way more more likely to be arrested on marijuana costs than white, non-Hispanic folks.

Alexander stated that between 100 and 200 licenses would go to individuals who had been convicted of a marijuana-related offense earlier than the drug was legalized, or to those that have “a father or mother, guardian, youngster, partner or dependent” with a marijuana conviction.

However a conviction shouldn’t be the one criterion. Alexander stated his workplace would weigh candidates’ probability of working profitable companies — a reminder that the state has each ideological and income objectives to fulfill. Forty % of tax income from the brand new dispensaries is earmarked to go to communities affected by medicine.

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Count on a largely sunny day with temperatures within the excessive 40s. The night can be partly cloudy, with temps dropping to the mid-30s.

alternate-side parking

In impact till March 17 (Purim).

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At the moment we’ll get a dose of unemployment statistics for New York Metropolis. The state Division of Labor, which collects the information, will announce the town’s unemployment fee for January. I requested Patrick McGeehan, who covers the New York economic system for the Metro desk, what to anticipate. However I began with a distinct query.

The nationwide unemployment determine for January was launched on Feb. 4, and February’s nationwide jobs report got here out final week. Why didn’t we get the January determine for New York Metropolis launched sooner?

It’s odd to be ready for the January numbers for New York per week after we bought the February numbers for the nation.

The state releases these outcomes about two weeks after the federal numbers come out at 8:30 a.m. on first Friday of the month — besides in February. In February, they don’t launch the January numbers as a result of they’re engaged on an annual revision of the numbers. They name it benchmarking.

So wanting again at 2021 delayed the January 2022 outcomes. At the moment we’ll not solely discover out what the numbers for January had been, we’ll see what revisions they made to the numbers for final yr as a complete.

What in regards to the January unemployment fee? What do you count on?

Regardless of the quantity is, my expectation is it’s going to point out the impact of Omicron as a result of we had been nonetheless within the thick of that disaster when this knowledge was collected.

My guess is the unemployment determine could be larger in contrast with the determine from December, when the town’s unemployment fee was 8.8 %, greater than twice the three.8 % fee nationally.

However the knowledge from January — the information behind the determine that can be launched at the moment — is already outdated. We’re into March. It seems to be like higher occasions are coming, not less than on the virus entrance, the reopening entrance and the rehiring entrance. Economically, when you assume again, issues had been wanting higher going into December. Then we bought hit by Omicron.

Recollections of the white bins with the cellophane home windows

Phrase that Charles E. Entenmann had died in Florida prompted a query. He was the final of three brothers who ran a Lengthy Island bakery, based by their grandfather, because it turned one of many nation’s best-known baked-goods producers. He was 92.

The query was: What’s so particular about Entenmann’s?

There was no finish of solutions on social media, after all.

“My father’s favourite dessert was Entenmann’s crumb cake, with espresso,” @alexmckenna wrote. “He all the time left the butter knife within the field to make it simpler to chop the subsequent piece. All of us fought over the corners.”

@Keith Olbermann — the journalist, author and broadcaster — remembered “a vanilla-filled model of the crumb cake.”

“This I might not solely kill for however, between you and me, I’ve,” he wrote. “My physique weight was as soon as ~22 % Entenmann’s.”

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METROPOLITAN diary

Star-Struck

Pricey Diary:

It was 1969 and I wished nothing extra for my sixteenth birthday than to see “The Nice White Hope” on Broadway. The present had simply received a number of Tony Awards, together with greatest actor for James Earl Jones and greatest actress for Jane Alexander.

I lived in South Fallsburg, within the Catskills, and I by no means imagined that my boyfriend on the time would shock me with tickets or that my dad and mom would enable me to enter the town.

The present was mesmerizing and when it was over, we stayed by the stage door to get my program autographed. After almost an hour, we had been one in every of two younger {couples} nonetheless ready when James Earl Jones popped his head out.

Noting our perseverance, he invited us backstage. He was charming, and after a couple of minutes within the nice actor’s firm, this star-struck teen left together with his signature on her Playbill.

Greater than 40 years later, I went to listen to Jane Alexander give a lecture. When it was over, I bought on the road with those that had been ready to get books signed.

After I bought to the entrance, I introduced my treasured program, instructed her my story and left along with her autograph subsequent to the one from James Earl Jones.

— Sari Feldman

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Ship submissions right here and learn extra Metropolitan Diary right here.

Glad we may get collectively right here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Right here’s at the moment’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You’ll find all our puzzles right here.

Melissa Guerrero, Sadiba Hasan and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York At the moment. You may attain the crew at nytoday@nytimes.com.

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