Black Market Grass

Noxon, whose name has been changed, started selling weed about eight years ago in Dutchess County.

His legitimate job barely paid rent and bought food, but the discretionary income from selling weed and concentrated cannabis, including THC vape cartridges, which he said are diverted from the legal market in California, gave him what he called “a quality-of-life cushion.”

He has no plans to stop.

People don’t like paying taxes, Noxon said of the prospect of competing against legal adult-use cannabis in New York, especially when they already have an established black-market connection.

Noxon, and the black market as a whole, is one of the many wild cards in determining how many cannabis consumers in the state begin to purchase marijuana legally once dispensaries open. But a low tax rate on cannabis could shift consumers to the legal market more successfully than states like California.

After years of starts and stops, legislation legalizing adult recreational marijuana was signed into law by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on March 31. The Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act [MRTA] was intended to make up for a $15 billion budget shortfall, nearly all of which will be filled by the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, though the law is still on the books.  READ MORE