BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — There are growing frustrations within the Western New York cannabis industry. Some farmers are concerned that their hard work could spoil with a lack of stores to sell their product.
"Spent money for a year and not make a penny on it, it gets difficult," Joshua Pettit, a cultivator with Greenside Cannabis, said.
Pettit said for Greenside Cannabis in Western New York this past year has been anything but easy.
"Well in the beginning it's like you're on top of the world. We're one of 300 people in the whole state of 20 million people to get this license but there's nowhere to sell it. A year later and you look at it a little bit differently like, 'Maybe this wasn't a great idea,'" he said, "All the farmers in New York have been sitting on a lot of product, close to a year and it needs to go somewhere."
Like many farmers across the state, Pettit said about a year ago when Greenside Cannabis got a license to legally grow, there was hope many retail marijuana shops would soon buy its product. But, through the Office of Cannabis Management, there's been a slow rollout of licenses for stores to legally sell cannabis products.
"There's basically nowhere to sell this product," Pettit said.
Just about a month ago, the state awarded licenses to the first four dispensaries in Western New York. Aaron Van Camp, who is planning to open Dank, a dispensary on Main Street in Downtown Buffalo, was one of the dispensaries awarded. He plans to work closely with Greenside Cannabis and is currently working on his downtown shop so that he can open soon.
"We can get this place open quick and try and really get this process rolling," Camp said.
At a Cannabis Association of New York town hall with OCM officals on Thursday, regulators plan to launch a marijuana farmers market model soon to meet demand and help growers get their product on the market.
"We're thinking very expansively about the types of places that this can be done as long as we can municipal approval to host these events. We're gonna be pretty liberal in trying to have these be events that can both be set up as independent type farmers markets," John Kagia, OCM's Director of Policy, said.
Camp and Pettit are planning to pair up with other dispensaries and farms in Western New York to sell product through a marijuana farmers market.
"We're like very much on the same page as far as building a community feeling and trying to keep everybody together, " Camp said.
