I remember the simpler days of trying to score pot from friends and connections. Most of the time you weren’t very picky — you took whatever your dealer had. A rolled-up plastic sandwich bag with shake, or a bud in some aluminum foil, or a pre-rolled joint were the common packaging when it was all illegal. There was no consumer protection agency to register complaints. The quality was all over the place. Sometimes it was the perfect high, other times weak tea, and on occasion you got so high you couldn’t feel your legs — the infamous “polio pot.”

In those days, getting weed was like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get. And, to a degree, its illegality made it somewhat “cool” in certain crowds; a bit risky and bohemian. Today, pot, now called cannabis more often than not, has lost its edgy cache to become just another legal, pre-packaged means to artificially sedate or relax our chronically stressed-out selves. Aummm ...

With its promise of new tax revenues and jobs, state government took the cannabis industry out of the shadows with legalization in 2021. Thus far, the results of the rollout have been nothing short of a disaster, even according to the governor. The process of approving dispensary licenses has been a serious lost opportunity.

Following a number of other states — 24 so far — that legalized recreational cannabis, New York has had plenty of examples from which to study and compare. After three years, how is the legal weed rollout going? As of the end of last week, New York State has a total of 150 licensed dispensaries, about a third of them in New York City alone. This for a state with a population of 20 million. For comparison, New Jersey, with half New York’s population, legalized weed within weeks of New York and currently has almost as many dispensaries as New York does. California, with over two times New York’s population, currently has over 3,600 dispensaries. By the way, New York State has approximately 3,800 wine and liquor retailers, which tend to be small, family-owned businesses long entrenched in their communities.

Kingston still doesn’t have a legally licensed and open cannabis dispensary. And Ulster County, with all of its aging hippies and young hipsters who surely enjoy a toke (or vape) or two, frustratingly has only one or two licensed and open dispensaries for recreational weed. If you are buying cannabis in Ulster from a store, you’re more than likely purchasing from a grey, unregulated enterprise. They can look quite professional, even taking credit cards (thank goodness!). Many offer pre-rolls, flavored buds, gummies, CBD medicinals, creams, aromatherapies, CBD dog and cat options and much more.

However, because it’s not a legal operation, the products sold are inconsistently carried. They sell whatever they can get with no guarantees in their supply chain. And accountability? Well, let’s just say you take some risk.

One more observation — cannabis packaging appears designed to appeal to young audiences. One sees many shiny plastic mini-Ziplock bags with anime, faerie or Marvel-esque imagery, or half-dozen pre-rolls fussily placed in little metallic boxes that are harder to open than my Walgreens’ Xanax bottles — it’s too much work!

Such packaging design certainly wouldn’t be permitted for cigarettes or alcohol. Maybe state bureaucrats will eventually get around to regulating cannabis packaging and the Wild West of retail will be replaced with locked display cases and strict ID’ing. In the meantime, as someone who used to work in package design, I enjoy seeing all the creativity and diversity. I doubt they’ve been vetted through focus groups.

In the meantime, a big part of the problem with the abominable rollout is that the grey unregulated market has taken over the industry and is now setting the pace and tone. The state’s well-intended but disastrously implemented goal of incorporating social justice goals in the rollout — and the process-delaying litigation that followed — has hobbled the nascent industry, ensuring dysfunctionality. And while the state concentrated on awarding early licenses to those with prior pot convictions, they failed to attend to even basic business needs, like financing, interstate commerce and federal regulations.

This has sadly tripped up the large cannabis manufacturing plant planned for construction by Cresco in Ellenville. And Ellenville isn’t the only community let down and dealing with cannabis limbo.

Ulster County has a number of local cannabis farms that have invested deeply in the state’s legalization of recreational and medical marijuana. But because so few dispensaries have opened, they have too much supply on their hands and are financially suffering, with some going out of business. Marijuana doesn’t store well for long periods of time, so much of it goes to waste, or is sold on the black or grey market. And they can’t ship it across state borders because the U.S. government still considers cannabis a controlled substance.

Interstate commerce is federally regulated, and it’s complicated. We recently learned that any bank that has FDIC insurance backing from the federal government cannot do business with the cannabis industry. Whoops! That’s what has put the Cresco project in Ellenville on hold, so we’re told, until the administration and Congress do something to fix it.

In the meantime, Ulster County and the entire state have been anticipating cannabis revenues and jobs, and an economic lift from an industry. But for now, the results are only half-baked.

Raleigh Green is a local business owner specializing in marketing communications consulting and services.