An Orange County business is about to do something that’s never been done in the Mid-Hudson region: legally deliver recreational marijuana.
Big Gas Dispensary and Delivery will start taking orders for marijuana products such as flower, edibles and vaporizers on Saturday.
To begin, they will offer more than 100 products for delivery.
Big Gas owners Kareem Haynesworth and Zymia Lewis spent much of Thursday entering item numbers into their sales system at their center meant for temporary delivery only.
“Once we enter the catalog, we’re able to intake all the inventory into the system, and it’ll upload onto the site,” Lewis said.
The Office of Cannabis Management has strict delivery rules. Delivery drivers have to be cleared by the OCM, products must be stored in a lockbox when transporting, and the company cannot publicly disclose the location of its fulfillment center. However, it is somewhere near Goshen.
“We’re learning a lot as we go as well,” Haynesworth said. “There are a lot of rules and regulations that we’re going to follow to be successful.”
The team was ready to start business in August, but a lawsuit challenging the state’s social justice dispensary licensing system blocked more than 400 licensees from opening until late November.
The lawsuit, brought by a group of disabled veterans and established cannabis retailers, was resolved.
Haynesworth is a social justice licensee. He got one of the first licenses because he once served an eight-month jail sentence for delivering marijuana.
“We’re finally getting the opportunity to do what was once looked at with shame and frowned upon, and now the world is embracing it.” he said.
Big Gas plans to open its full cannabis dispensary in Woodbury in early 2024. For that to happen, it must build it out and have the village board pass specific zoning regulations.
