A group of cannabis dispensary operators called on Gov. Kathy Hochul Thursday to forgive tens of millions of dollars of high-cost loans that they say threaten the viability of their businesses.
The loans were made by a social equity loan fund created by the Hochul administration to provide capital to dispensary owners, but that has instead "perpetuated many of the economic inequities it was designed to combat," according to a letter to her from the group, which includes operators whose lives were affected by the state's former, racially discriminatory drug laws.
The City highlighted the plight of several of them, including in an article last November focused on Roland Conner, operator of the first cannabis dispensary backed by the fund, which opened in early 2023. Conner signed a $1.9 million loan with a 13% interest rate and had trouble making the monthly payments within a year.
The letter is from a collective of borrowers who participated in what is known as the conditional adult-use retail dispensary program, or CAURD, and it took aim at the $200-million fund proposed by Hochul in early 2022 as a way to finance the first 150 cannabis dispensaries in the state.
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