City targets landlords in push to close illegal weed shops

BY NICK GARBER

Landlords who rent to illicit marijuana retailers are facing new legal action from the city, and hundreds of smoke shops suspected of selling cannabis without a license will be threatened with eviction by Manhattan’s top prosecutor, o cials said last week.

District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s o ce has sent letters to more than 400 stores suspected of illicit cannabis sales, threatening to force their landlords to evict them. Mayor Eric Adams announced four lawsuits against East Village smoke shops accused of selling marijuana to undercover o cers—also implicating each of the shop’s landlords as defendants.

e announcements, made in a joint news conference by Adams and Bragg, represent a major escalation in the city’s war against the unlicensed smoke shops that have proliferated around the ve boroughs in recent months, coinciding with New York’s legalization of recreational marijuana.

As the state sluggishly rolls out a licensing system for prospective cannabis retailers, hundreds of businesses have outed that process entirely, openly selling marijuana products out of garishly decorated, unlicensed storefronts. e city has struggled to get a handle on the in ux, conducting raids on some stores but leaving a large majority uninspected.

Targeting landlords is a new tactic, and the city has already gotten the ball rolling by ling a series of lawsuits last week against the landlords and proprietors of four smoke shops in the East Village. e lawsuits allege that undercover, underage police o cers bought marijuana at each of the shops on three occasions in December.

A Dec. 15 sting at a shop at First Avenue and East First Street resulted in the o cer paying $30 for a bag of weed labeled “Dubz Garden Oreoz Cannabis Americas Favorite Nugz,” one lawsuit says. Testing at a New York Police Department laboratory con rmed that the substance was cannabis, authorities wrote.

In each ling the city demandsnancial penalties from both the landlords and store owners. e city is relying on its law against public nuisances, historically used to shut down brothels and drug dens—al- though reports that the law had been disproportionately applied in communities of color prompted a series of reforms in 2017.

“ e East Village community raised complaints with the NYPD, and working with the Law Department, the city took action,” city Corporation Counsel Syliva Hinds-Ridix said.

While the lings also request court orders to shutter each shop for one year, Hinds-Radix said the city would seek to close the shops only if they continued to break the law.

Real estate players

Signi cant real estate players could be caught up in the proceedings. One of the buildings named in the lings, 24 Avenue A, is owned by the Sabet Group, a rm that owns properties across Lower Manhattan. A company representative did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

As for the district attorney’s letters, Bragg’s o ce said it would determine in the coming weeks whether there is enough evidence to start eviction proceedings against any of the hundreds of shops suspected of illicit sales.

Prosecutors will then use their authority under state law to require landlords to evict the shops—and authorities will start their own proceedings if the landlord fails to act, Bragg’s o ce said.

e city is walking “a delicate tightrope” in going after landlords as part of a cannabis crackdown, said Je Schultz, an attorney at Feuerstein Kulick who represents licensed cannabis operators.

“We’re probably past the point of locking people up for selling cannabis,” Schultz said. “But at the same time, failure to take action here is not consistent with the goals of the adult-use program”—which calls for awarding New York’s rst licenses to people a ected by the drug’s past criminalization.

As aspiring legal retailers watch the illicit boom with dismay, Schultz said he has called for authorities to focus on landlords. ere would be precedent, he argued, pointing to a Los Angeles law that holds landlords liable for illegal marijuana businesses. at law’s e ectiveness has been unclear, Schultz said—but he was heartened by New York’s beefed-up enforcement.

“It’s a good sign that the city is taking this seriously,” he said.

Bragg’s o ce did not say how it identi ed the hundreds of shops that received the eviction threats. But local o cials have publicly accused cannabis shops of operating illicitly in their districts. Among them is City Council member Gale Brewer, who represents Manhattan. Her o ce found 26 unlicensed retailers during a December survey.

“My hope is to not have to bring a matter,” Bragg said. “Hopefully the commercial landlords will understand that they’ve been put on notice.” ■