NYC Mayoral Candidates Reveal Whether They’ve Purchased Marijuana From Licensed Shops During Contentious Debate
NYC mayoral cannabis debate: Three candidates, one blunt question, and a city still figuring out what “legal” really means. On a stage built for gotchas and body blows, the moderator lobbed something more intimate: have you ever purchased from a licensed cannabis shop? Zohran Mamdani grinned and said yes. Curtis Sliwa, battle-scarred and pragmatic, said yes too, adding he’d leaned on medical marijuana after taking five bullets and later for Crohn’s. Andrew Cuomo—who signed adult-use into law in 2021 before exiting in scandal—offered a clipped no. That tiny syllable echoed. Not because it changes policy, but because it hints at how each contender wears legalization: as lived reality, medical necessity, or arm’s‑length statute. In a city with a sprawling unlicensed bazaar and a fledgling legal cannabis market, the question felt less like a trap and more like a vibe check on cannabis policy reform, licensed marijuana shops, and the New York cannabis market that’s trying to grow up without losing its soul.
Mamdani didn’t get coy. He has receipts—both personal and legislative. He voted for legalization and did it with a flourish, reminding Albany that “loud” is more than volume; it’s vernacular, culture, and a stubborn fact of life in New York. He joked that ingesting cannabis might turn you into an elected official, then cast his vote and moved on. He’s said as much before, with an irreverence that reads like honesty on a good day and provocation on a bad one (here’s that backstory). Sliwa’s answer felt different: a reminder that medical cannabis isn’t a talking point; it’s a lifeline when the body bites back. Neither he nor Mamdani disclosed exactly what they bought, and that’s fine. The point wasn’t SKUs, it was normalization. The city once policed the scent of a jazz cigarette like contraband perfume. Now it’s asking mayoral hopefuls where they shop. That’s not just optics—it’s a compass for marijuana policy reform, pointing from stigma toward the mundane.
The Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA) legalizing adult-use marijuana in NY was just signed into law!
As I said on the floor, ingesting marijuana just might lead to you becoming an elected official 👀 🍃
Here is more about what legal loud looks like in NY ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/E0z3awHH3c
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) March 31, 2021
Here’s the ledger. Legal cannabis revenue in New York has quietly become real money—more than $2 billion in total sales since launch, with over $1 billion in 2025 alone. Regulators, bruised by a messy rollout and a swarm of gray-market storefronts, are mid‑course correcting. The Office of Cannabis Management extended conditional adult‑use renewal deadlines to December 31, 2026, buying provisional licensees time to secure viable locations and inch toward full licensure. The state is trying to clean up a zoning snafu that put more than 100 operators too close to schools or houses of worship, a bureaucratic pothole that shouldn’t flatten so many small dreams. Enforcement got sharper, too. New York City’s crackdowns—padlocks on illegal doors, paperwork where there used to be a shrug—coincided with licensed shops reporting big sales gains. Regulators rolled out a “buy legal” map, a workforce training program, and kept pop-up “showcase” events alive. It’s not glamorous. It is governance. And that’s what cannabis taxation and regulation look like when the cameras go home: spreadsheets, inspections, and a delicate dance between access and order.
Equity—the thing every press conference swears by—remains the hardest road. The state cut first-round grants under a $5 million program, giving 52 justice‑involved retailers up to $30,000 for startup and operating costs. Helpful, sure. But many CAURD licensees are still stuck in molasses—high-interest loans, late buildouts, and landlords who smell risk from a mile away. Advocates want relief on predatory debt and a regulatory tempo that favors small operators over deep-pocketed chain stores. This is where the money question gets moral. Tax dollars from legal cannabis can fund addiction services, job training, and community repair. Starve the legal market and you starve those programs—a dynamic echoed by a neighboring state’s warning in Top Massachusetts Marijuana Regulator Says Ballot Measures To Recriminalize Sales Would Imperil Tax Funds For Drug Treatment. And the federal horizon matters: banking access and rescheduling aren’t abstractions; they’re oxygen. You can hear the debate in Senators Disagree On Whether Trump Rescheduling Marijuana Would Get Industry Banking Bill Across The Finish Line and the political calculus in Cannabis reform is “good politics,” Trump White House official says (Newsletter: October 17, 2025). Local shops feel these national tremors in their rent, their insurance, their ability to take a card without flinching.
Back to the stage. Sliwa’s medical testimony, Mamdani’s cultural ease, Cuomo’s arm’s‑length denial—none of it writes the next chapter alone. Voters will. And they’ve been steadily, stubbornly pragmatic about cannabis, hemp, and the economy that runs between them. Three in four Americans want hemp to stay legal, with tighter rules where they count—an appetite for regulation, not recriminalization, as captured in Three In Four American Voters Want Hemp To Stay Legal, With Enhanced Regulations, Poll Finds. New York’s next mayor won’t win by promising weed nirvana or punitive crackdowns. They’ll win by making legal stores easy to find, equity licenses viable, enforcement smart, and tax dollars visible in the neighborhoods that paid the old drug war’s bill. That’s the grit behind the grin. If you’re ready to explore compliant, high-quality THCA products while the policy beats march on, step into our world here: https://thcaorder.com/shop/.
