Manhattan Councilwoman Gale Brewer plans to introduce a bill Thursday that would require Mayor Adams’ administration to release quarterly reports providing details on the city’s cannabis enforcement activities — a measure Brewer says she’s advancing due to a lack of transparency.
The quarterly reports would need to spell out the outcomes of every raid conducted by the city Sheriff’s Office and any accompanying agencies at suspected illicit smoke shops, according to a copy of the legislation provided to the Daily News by Brewer ahead of its introduction. The reports would also have to specify the address of every shop targeted.
Brewer, who is expected to introduce the legislation during the Council’s stated meeting Thursday afternoon, has long complained that the Adams administration isn’t responsive to her requests for weed crackdown data amid a proliferation of pot shops in her Upper West Side district since New York’s 2021 legalization of recreational pot.
“The public wants to know what’s happening with smoke shop enforcement but there’s nowhere to find the results of the sheriff’s hard work,” said Brewer in a statement to The News on Wednesday. “This is information that should be available to everyone.”
In a Thursday morning TV appearance, the mayor poured cold water on Brewer’s bill, arguing that increased transparency would require resources that should be reserved for enforcement.
“Let’s let these folks focus on doing their job,” he said on Fox5. “Every time we add a new layer of reporting, we’re taking people off of the actual goal of doing the job, and we can’t be a clerical Sheriff’s Department. We must be a department that’s going after closing down these shops.”
Adams launched his administration’s Operation Padlock to Protect program to shutter weed stores earlier this year after the state Legislature granted the city expanded enforcement powers.
The mayor has touted the operation as a success, including at a press conference in the Bronx on Wednesday, where he told reporters the effort has resulted in the closure of approximately 640 illegal smoke shops to date. Estimates say there are around 3,000 illegal marijuana retail establishments across the five boroughs, and Adams initially promised all of them would be shuttered within 30 days of the city being given expanded enforcement powers, a vow he later walked back.
An issue that has emerged since the crackdown started is shuttered shops reopening after contesting their padlock cases in administrative court.
At Wednesday’s press conference, the mayor vowed to continue to shutter every illegal shop his team can find.
“We’re saying to those who are doing this: We’re more sophisticated than you. We will find you. We will shut you down,” he said. “And in cases where it calls for incarceration, we are going to incarcerate.”
