Shuttered Jersey City dispensary takes its social equity fight to court

GARDEN STATE BLUES
A shuttered Jersey City dispensary takes its social equity fight to court

What happened: The Other Side, a Jersey City dispensary, closed its doors in February.

Founder Dr. Alyza Brevard-Rodriguez, a combat veteran and social equity licenseholder, said she was forced to shutter the store "because Jersey City created a regulatory environment where doing everything right still isn't enough to survive."

"This business did not fail because of demand, performance, or management," she said.

The Other Side opened in 2024 amid much fanfare over New Jersey's social equity program.

Brevard-Rodriguez is now taking her fight to the courts. She filed a tort claim against Jersey City, a precursor to a possible class action suit over the state's failed promises to social equity-aligned cannabis businesses.

What they're saying: "Cannabis was supposed to be a path toward restoration, economic mobility, and community reinvestment," Brevard-Rodriguez said.

"Instead, many of us were placed into a system that extracted from us while failing to provide the structure, consistency, or fairness necessary for survival. I am leading this fight because leadership does not end when the mission gets hard."

And: "New Jersey had an opportunity to build one of the nation's most inclusive cannabis markets. The question now is whether policymakers are willing to address the gaps between the promise of the program and the reality experienced by many participants."

Why it matters: Cannabis social equity programs were designed to create economic opportunity and uplift the communities harmed most by the War on Drugs.

But red tape, a lack of illicit market enforcement, delayed licensing, and scarce capital due to federal restrictions have forced many social equity-aligned businesses to close within a few years of opening.

Despite good intentions from most of the policymakers who wrote the rules, the social equity licensing systems in New York, New Jersey, California, and elsewhere need an overhaul to help entrepreneurs stay on their feet.

The Other Side is just one example of many businesses failing, and the blame lies more with the regulations than the operators. 

What's next: States like Virginia should heed these lessons as they write their own cannabis regulations.

All businesses need accessible capital, predictable rules, and a level playing field to survive, social equity or not.

-JB

“If you're not sure what to say to a teenager about cannabis right now, you're not alone,” Dr. June Chin, the Chief Medical Officer of the New York State Office of Cannabis Management said.

“Here's what the research tells us: teenagers tune out fear-based warnings and lectures. What works is different — adults who ask questions, stay calm when they hear an uncomfortable answer, and keep showing up for the conversation instead of delivering one "big talk" and calling it done.”

The New York State Office of Cannabis Management released Cannabis Honestly, a new public education campaign built from a statewide listening tour that gives young people ages 11 to 17 and the parents and trusted adults who support them conversation tools, toolkits, and free bilingual materials for talking about cannabis. The website is full of info and super easy to navigate — it’s great to have tools like this available that state risks plainly without devolving into fear-mongering.  

New York trades labor peace for a cannabis wage board ⚖️

Lawmakers passed a bill scrapping labor peace agreements as a licensing condition, replacing them with public pay disclosures and a three-member wage board that would recommend minimum wages for cultivation, processing, distribution, and retail. It's now Hochul's call, and while the board can lawfully conclude wages are already adequate, machinery this deliberate rarely gets built to say no. Here’s the full text of the bill. 

Idaho's medical cannabis initiative won't make the November ballot 🗳️

Organizers fell about 12,000 signatures short, and the Secretary of State referred possible fraud, including a signature from a voter who died in 2021, to state police. The catch: a measure on the same ballot would give lawmakers sole power to legalize any drug, likely making this Idahoans' last shot at doing it themselves.

California's own regulator says local bans are feeding the illicit market ⚖️

New Department of Cannabis Control data shows 96.6% of illicit cannabis seized in unincorporated areas since 2022 came from just eight counties, nearly all of which ban licensed growers. DCC Director Clint Kellum's point: localities can outlaw the shops, but they can't outlaw demand, so the trade just goes underground.

Hemp beverages grew 133% last year, per new industry data 🍹

The Hemp Beverage Alliance released what it says is the first independently verified wholesale sales dataset for the category, showing volume more than doubled from roughly 692,000 case equivalents in 2024 to 1.6 million in 2025, with lower-dose products gaining share. The catch: all that growth hits a wall in November, when hemp beverages become federally illegal unless Congress acts.

MMJ pitches its own exclusion as the real rescheduling story ⚖️

MMJ International Holdings, which is petitioning the D.C. Circuit to overturn the Schedule III order, issued a press release on the hearing's final day claiming the media missed the real story: that the DEA wouldn't let MMJ testify.

A cannabis oil just posted its best-ever results against dementia agitation 🧠

In the first trial of its kind, 120 hospice-eligible dementia patients got a twice-daily THC/CBD oil, and nearly 90% showed less agitation at 12 weeks, against under 25% on placebo, with no "high" and side effects no worse than the placebo group. It's early, unpublished, and not FDA-approved, but for a symptom that's long been managed with antipsychotics and opioids, those are numbers worth watching.

I smoked cannabis for nearly 20 years. Here’s what I wish I knew at 13. | The Washington Post

SC veterans deserve a conversation on legalizing medical marijuana | South Carolina Daily Gazette