Every so often, a customer at our Schenectady counter asks some version of the same question: “Could the town just make you move?” It’s a fair question. A court case out of Long Island this year gave it a clear answer, and the answer is good news for anyone who shops at a licensed store.
What happened in Riverhead
The Town of Riverhead, out on Long Island, wrote its own rule for dispensaries: no licensed shop within 1,000 feet of a school, measured property line to property line. State law says something different. New York’s Cannabis Law sets the distance at 500 feet from school grounds, and it spells out how that distance gets measured.
A licensed operator picked a Riverhead location about 735 feet from the local high school. Fine under state law, too close under the town’s rule. The town said no. The operator sued, and the case went to the Appellate Division, Second Department — the appeals court that covers Long Island and the Hudson Valley.
The court sided with the operator. In its July 29 decision (Matter of 1086 OCR, LLC v. Town of Riverhead Zoning Board of Appeals), the court held that the state’s cannabis law takes up the whole field of how licensed dispensaries operate. Because Albany already set the school distance and how to measure it, a town can’t swap in a stricter number of its own. Riverhead’s 1,000-foot rule was preempted, and the shop didn’t need a variance to open at its state-approved location.
What towns can still do
This doesn’t leave towns powerless, and the court didn’t say it does. Local governments keep their say over the time, place and manner of a business’s operations — the ordinary zoning questions any store deals with — as long as those rules don’t make it unreasonably hard for a licensed shop to operate, and don’t contradict what the state has already decided. What a town can’t do is write cannabis-specific rules that quietly override the state licensing system.
Why this matters up here
We’re in Schenectady, not Riverhead, and the Second Department doesn’t cover the Capital Region directly. But rulings like this set the terms everyone argues from, and the principle is simple: a dispensary that followed the state’s rules to get licensed and sited doesn’t have to wonder whether a new local rule will undo it next year.
That stability is worth something to you as a shopper. It means the licensed store you buy from today is the store that will be there next season. It means new licensed shops can open where the state says they can, instead of spending years in zoning fights. And it keeps the line bright between the regulated market — tested products, ID checks, taxes that fund the state — and the unlicensed shops that operate outside all of it.
Upstate Canna Co. was one of New York’s earliest licensed dispensaries (license OCM-CAURD-23-000005), and we’ve operated under the state’s rules from day one: every product lab-tested, every customer carded, every sale on the books. Court decisions like this one are the boring legal machinery that keeps it that way.
Questions about how licensing works, or what’s on the shelf this week? Stop by 1613 Union St in Schenectady, check the live menu online, or order for delivery across the Capital Region — we’ll walk you through it.