They’re just a stoner’s throw away.
Some Nassau County politicians are huffing and puffing over an influx of Queens pot dispensaries setting up shop directly adjacent to the Long Island towns of Hempstead and North Hempstead, which “opted out” of the state law allowing the over-the-counter sale of the drug.
“We can’t have these kind of shenanigans taking place where people are opening these shops on the borders,” Hempstead Town Supervisor Donald Clavin said during a press conference last week on the New Hyde Park, LI, and Queens border near another soon-to-open city shop.
State Sen. Jack Martins, who represents Mineola, LI, introduced legislation Wednesday that would create a quarter-mile buffer zone between Nassau and Queens where dispensaries would not be allowed to operate, Newsday reported.
If passed, the zones would also exist around the dispensary-eligible Suffolk County towns of Babylon, Brookhaven, Southampton and Riverhead.
Martins, a Republican who hopes for bipartisan support for his bill, said the sales should not be “in our backyard, not so close to our communities, not so close to our families.
“And make no mistake, it does put our communities at risk, it does target our children, and it does target the communities that … were given the option of opting out,” he said.
In Suffolk’s non-dispensary town of Smithtown, Supervisor Ed Wehrheim said he supports the buffer idea.
“The current law allows cannabis establishments to be placed directly on the borders of opt-out communities, undermining the intent of our local government and the voice of our residents,” he said in a statement.
“[Martins’] bill is a necessary step in protecting the integrity of municipal decisions while ensuring that our quality of life, community character, and public safety remain a priority.”
But Queens is showing blunt opposition to the proposal by the Nassau pols.
“These officials are obviously spending their money in our borough’s cannabis shops,” a spokesman for Queens Borough President Donovan Richards Jr. quipped to Newsday.
“Because they must be high if they think Nassau County has any right to legislate what kind of licensed business can open here in Queens County.”
Sid Patel, who manages Green Flower Dispensary on the Queens and Nassau border, told CBS he is “surprised” by the backlash and added, “We are following the law.
“The products here are lab-tested, controlled by the state from cultivation to packaging, to distribution and retail,” Patel said.
“Nassau County is protesting, but we are not in Nassau County. We are in Queens.”
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