Sen. Jeremy Cooney, D-Rochester, is pictured speaking at a community event in late March. Cooney is sponsoring legislation that would codify in state law the way the state Office of Cannabis Management conducts administrative inspections.

State lawmakers are trying to give the state Office of Cannabis Management some of its teeth back as a court battle over the organization’s enforcement power is waged in a state appeals court.

Assemblywoman Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, and Sen. Jeremy Cooney, D-Rochester, have introduced legislation (A.11186/S.9924) codifying into statute the general parameters under which the Office of Cannabis Management may conduct administrative inspections.

“OCM has conducted administrative inspections under the guidelines this bill proposes, however there is currently a Court injunction in place against OCM which has placed severe restrictions on their inspection capabilities,” Peoples-Stokes and Cooney wrote in their legislative justification. “The injunction is premised on the fact that OCM’s procedures, while they do place guidelines on how inspections are conducted, are not codified in law. This bill would rectify that issue.”

The court case Peoples-Stokes and Cooney reference is known as Super Smoke N Save LLC et al v. New York State Cannabis Control Board et al and centers on the search of five New York City area businesses and the seizure of materials from those businesses.

In January 2025, state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Marcelle ruled that Office of Cannabis Management searches of legal hemp shops in the New York City area constituted warrantless search and seizures in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Marcelle ruled the New York City Sheriff’s office was barred from conducting warrantless searches of businesses that appear on the state Office of Cannabis Management’s directory of Cannabinoid Hemp Retail Licenses maintained under the state’s Cannabis Law while also ordering anything seized as part of a warrantless search to be returned to the businesses.

“In short, while the Constitution okays warrantless searches in some situations, it never gives the go ahead to unreasonable ones,” Marcelle wrote. “Here, the searches’ purpose and their manner of execution seem deeply removed from any reasonable administrative search. To begin the purposes of the searches related not to compliance with licensure but discovery of contraband. While the subjective purpose for conducting a search or seizure is generally irrelevant to the search or seizure’s constitutionality, it is not always so. … On the present early and incomplete record, the court is preliminarily convinced that the purpose of respondents’ inspections was to discover illicit contraband, not to obtain evidence of regulatory violations – the proof on this point, in the court’s estimation, is beyond question.”

Marcelle said his ruling has no effect on the Office of Cannabis Management’s ability to take action against businesses with no licenses at all.

“One last comment needs to be made before moving to OCM’s authority,” Marcelle wrote. “It appears from the evidence that the vast majority of the Sheriff’s Office searches are directed at establishments without any licenses whatsoever. And nothing in this decision stops or prevents the Sheriff’s Office from doing the bulk of its work within the confines set by Cannabis Law.”

The state appealed Marcelle’s ruling in April 2025. While paperwork and some briefs have been filed as recently as this March in the Third Department Appellate Division, no decision has been reached. Despite Marcelle’s ruling that requiring warrants shouldn’t affect most Office of Cannabis Management enforcement actions, Peoples-Stokes and Cooney disagree.

“Illicit and unlicensed operators undermine compliant businesses, evade regulatory requirements, and may sell untested or mislabeled products,” Peoples-Stokes and Cooney wrote in their legislative justification. “This legislation clarifies the scope of the Office of Cannabis Management’s authority to conduct administrative inspection and seize unlawful products when probable cause exists, while also requiring that such actions be carried out reasonably and within the bounds of the regulatory framework. Clear statutory authority will strengthen enforcement

efforts and support the integrity of the legal marketplace.”