On Thursday, August 11, 2022, the Office of Cannabis Management (“OCM”) announced that the application period for Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (“CAURD”) licenses will open on Thursday, August 25. The application period will remain open for one month and will close on Monday, September 26, 2022.
CAURD licenses are available to certain “justice involved” individuals and nonprofit organizations that are able to demonstrate that they intentionally serve justice-involved individuals and communities with historically high rates of arrest, conviction, incarceration, or other indicators of law enforcement activity for cannabis-related offenses and create employment opportunities for justice-involved individuals. Justice-involved individuals are those who have been previously convicted of a cannabis-related offense or had certain close family members convicted of a cannabis-related offense.
As we mentioned in our last update, OCM will divide the state into regional geographic zones (e.g., Finger Lakes, Western NY, etc.) and each such zone will have a certain number of available licenses. Each applicant will rank preferences for regional geographic zones. If there are more eligible applicants than available licenses for a given zone, OCM may select from eligible applicants based on weighted scoring of the evaluation criteria. In the event of a tie between two or more candidates, OCM will randomly select the final applicants to recommend for approval.
The application fee is $2,000 and is non-refundable.