Police and state cannabis regulators inspect a Rotterdam hemp store, GV Alternatives, in 2023.

Among the reasons New York legalized cannabis in 2021 was to end the longstanding injustices that so many suffered due to the prohibition of a widely used recreational drug.

So consider the irony in the state’s regulation of hemp retailers: Its rules and enforcement actions are perpetrating a whole new kind of injustice, driving people who thought they were selling legal products to financial ruin.

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Hemp is legal under state law and also, since 2018, federal law. Thousands of hemp stores were operating in New York even before the state legalized recreational marijuana. But with legalization in 2021 came stricter rules for hemp products and the creation of a Cannabis Control Board to regulate the market.

As the Times Union’s Brendan J. Lyons........

© Times Union