After the long battle for businesses in the Finger Lakes region to be able to apply for marijuana licenses, some are still waiting for their time to come.
FingerLakes Cannabis Company co-owners Mark Byassee and Tim Hay decided to get into the cannabis industry more than two years ago.
“I had an illness. He went through an accident. It was during the COVID time period and we were both in sales jobs,” Byassee said.
They saw it as an opportunity to do something they enjoyed, but getting into the industry has been harder than they first imagined.
“Cannabis became legal and Mark and I thought that this would be relatively pretty quick,” Hay said. “They would issue licenses. We’d put an application in. They’d issue licenses and we’d be able to start selling recreational cannabis. It hasn’t been like that.”
Business owners like Byassee and Hay had to go through the New York State Office of Cannabis Management, which made sure applicants for a card license followed protocols like securing a location, getting approval from local municipalities and that the dispensary is at least 30% owned by a justice-involved individual or someone with a marijuana conviction.
“We checked off all those boxes and are currently still waiting for a license,” Hay said.
Despite every effort, they say they were not granted a license. Then the process was delayed because of a lawsuit filed by another company also denied approval by the state.
Byassee claims “because he wanted a…
