 Yes, I got it, Mike. Hello, hello. All right, is that working? Yes, so good afternoon. Thank you so much for joining us for this important conversation. I just wanted to quickly welcome you. My name is Dashita Dawson and I'm the founding director of the cannabis NYC and I will turn it over to our mayor, Eric Adams. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dashita. Just bringing her expertise to this conversation. Nothing is better than having someone who has toiled in the field on a particular agenda or initiative to bring their energy to this. When we were able to entice Dashita to come on board, it was a real win for us because it allowed us to build our team around someone with the expertise, the knowledge, the commitment and dedication. This is a real opportunity for those who have toiled in the field for a long time and we wanted a marquee player to build the team around and New Yorkers should be happy to know we found our LeBron James, you know? And all those who are here, it should not be lost on you with the visual that we have many black and brown folks that are here to really look at this opportunity. Historically, when you thought about cannabis, you thought about the over enforcement in these communities and how it has impacted these communities. Our goal is to get it right. It's not about enforcement. It's not about duplicating a heavy-handed approach. It's about to make sure these businesses are successful that they're able to operate and we don't have an over-proliferation of illegal sites that will clearly get in the way of the legal sites that we are putting in place and that is our goal here as we move forward. New York City is creating an equitable and legal cannabis industry. We have watched how other municipalities have gotten it wrong. We've watched, we've learned, we want to make sure we get it right and it's under threat. It's under threat from the unlicensed establishments that are selling illegal and counterfeit products. You tell me, can you tell the difference between what's legal and what's illegal? It is extremely difficult to do it. Bernadette made no difference because she probably used both, you know, so. But how do you tell the difference between the two? And really, we need to go back to Albany and really deal with this design. Look at this design. This is alarming for a child or a parent to have a child walk in these beautiful colors. Everyone knows how children feel about colors. It looks exactly the same. And this is what you're finding in our stores across the city that are popping up. Many of these stores are unsafe and targeted towards our kids, our children, as you see some of the illustrations that I hear. These graphics, they speak value of what is being sold. And we have to make sure that the industry stays in pace with those who are exploiting the industry to hurt the legal distributors and sellers of cannabis. Today we're saying to those who believe that this is going to become the wild, wild West of cannabis sale, we are saying clearly and loudly, no it is not. We are going to take steps towards stopping the unlicensed areas of stores that sell cannabis and illegal products to our city. They're popping up a lot. And over the course of two weeks, we had a joint emergency task force crack down on unlicensed establishments that are selling illegal cannabis, tobacco, and vaping products. I just really want to take my hat off to the task force. Sheriff Miranda, you're talking about reinventing an entire agency. I know he's around somewhere reinventing an entire agency. What he has done with the sheriff's office is just beyond our expectation. He has really led on many of these initiatives from paper plates to other initiatives that they are the lead that produce the issues that we are facing. He has been an upstream person that has looked at these projects. They have helped us seize over 100,000 illegal products, roughly $4 million in proceeds. And so I want to thank the sheriff, the New York City NYPD, Chief Madri, DCWP, and the Office of Cannabis Management for their work in protecting New Yorkers. And so when people say we're just allowing them to sprout out and do whatever they want, no, that is not true. This team has come together in just a short period of time. They have responded accordingly. And this work is really just starting. We know we have to match the aggressiveness of those who believe that they're going to impact the legal industry. We want the legal industry to be able to thrive correctly and do exactly what it was intended on doing. And those unlicensed stores threaten the health, the safety of New Yorkers by selling dangerous unlicensed products. If some of these products have toxic items in them, we don't know how they've been tested. We want to be clear that New Yorkers are safe and the industry grows. The adult use retail cannabis industry is a chance for New Yorkers who were directly impacted by the war on drugs. They can have an opportunity to succeed. And these unlicensed stores are undermining the market. They're getting in the way of productivity and they're sending out the wrong message. We will not let the economic opportunities that we fought for to fall to the wayside. It's time the unlicensed stores stop selling illegal products and comply with the law. The cannabis industry is a budding economy. I just realized they had buds. Yeah, put that in here. It's a budding economy. And we want to make sure that we get it right so that we can stay in the city of New York, that we are the joint. And I am committed to creating this and this team behind us, just an impressive group of people, those who have been part of the space from Erica Ford, from Life Camp, to folks who are part of our hip hop industry, to our council person. This is an initiative that the entire team of New Yorkers are saying, let's get this right. Let's make sure that we don't have illegal products getting in the way of what we fought for for so many years. And Dashiida has an important job of making sure we do our part and we need the state to do its part to look at this good piece of legislation, what we need to change and alter to empower us to stop the industries from being harmed. We need a real partnership. And when we return to Albany this year, we're going to lay out what we believe, some of the things we can do to tweak the law that was passed that we fought for to make sure we get it right because we can get it right. So again, I'm gonna turn it back over to Dashiida. Thank you for holding it down for us. Thank you. Woo. Thank you so much, Mayor. Next up, we will have our New York City Sheriff, Anthony Miranda. Thank you. Yes. So again, I wanna say that in November of this year, we began the task force, which consisted of the Sheriff's Office. It's a two-league pilot project that we combined with the Department of Consumer and Workers Protection, the New York City Police Department and the New York State Office of Cannabis Management. The Sheriff's Office task force was created to address unlicensed businesses, creating an ongoing public safety and public health crisis in many communities throughout the city. The businesses were engaged in the illegal sale of cigarettes, other tobacco products, e-cigarettes, flavored vapes, products containing THC cannabis and other cannabis projects. To address this serious public safety health issue, Mayor Adams forms a task force to send a clear message to unlicensed businesses that their actions will not be tolerated and it will be necessary for them to comply with the state's licensing laws. Just as important, the Sheriff's Office and all of our partners here today remain committed to protecting the legal cannabis industry and creating a fair and equitable opportunities for legal dispensaries to succeed. We wanna thank the many agencies, the commissioners and the different agencies that worked on this joint project, as well as the men and women that served in it and it was very successful undertaking. In order to achieve the shared goal, in order to achieve the goal, however we must stop bad actors who continue to operate illegally by selling unregulated and untested products. Not only are these establishments invading taxes and putting legal businesses at a devastating loss, the products they are selling have the potential to endanger health and the safety of the public. This has been well documented. We remain especially committed by the way, these businesses have targeted underage consumers by selling products that are marketed directly to children. In many instances, the Sheriff's Office has seized illegal cannabis products with brandings that appeals to younger people with the color brands. They also have Cheetos and few snacks, nachos, medicated skittles, in addition to advertising gummy bears and THC products. As the mayor has already shown us, these are the products that are being sold. These are the products that are not geared toward our adult population and these are the products that are endangering our children. This is enticing our children and is being very misleading. We also spoke about the mispackaging and the devastating labeling of the product. The task force has successfully inspected, the task force lasted for two weeks and has successfully inspected 53 locations throughout the five boroughs, seizing more than 100,000 illegal products totaling an aggravated value of over $4 million. We have also issued 500 civil violations and 66 criminal summonses and seized over 600 pounds of marijuana in the inspections. Wow. We cannot stress enough that these products are entirely unregulated and they carry an inherent danger to those in the public who may not be aware that they are purchasing illegal and counterfeit contraband. This is why this task force was necessary, not only to protect our communities, but also to protect the legal market and authorize dispensaries that actually play by the rules. I commend Mayor Adams for his leadership on this issue and we will continue to take collective action to hold bad actors accountable while protecting those businesses that are compliant with the rules and regulations. This is how we keep New Yorker safe and ensure the just and equitable rollout of the legal cannabis market so the city can be a leader in this. The task force and the collective effort of all the agencies under the mayor's directions was an effective response to having a holistic response to the illegal cannabis business and we look forward to continuing that activity. Each of the agencies on their own have enforcement abilities and will continue the jobs that they are doing but collectively we have taken a holistic approach all by the mayor's direction and it has been very effective in addressing all the concerns that our communities are very facing right now. So thank you very much. Thank you, Sheriff Miranda. Next up we actually have New York State Office of Cannabis Management Executive Director Chris Alexander. Thank you, Mr. Mayor for having us. We appreciate you. Good to see you as well as well as all the advocates and entrepreneurs behind us. It has been a pretty significant lift to get this market up and running and operational. In the last year, the state office has focused on developing regulations for the program and establishing licensing across the supply chain. We're now coming to the end of the year and our supply chain is complete. I cannot stress enough how much the governor appreciates the work that's been done by this task force. OCM's enforcement division, along with the sheriff's office have done incredible work navigating this new landscape where we have a proliferation of unregulated products being sold and made attractive to minors as folks have pointed out. I do wanna make and emphasize one point. We have now released our packaging, labeling, marketing, advertising, regulations. The products being sold and part of the reason that they're being seized in addition to not being compliant with those regulations is because of the contaminants that exist within those products. We have seen an industry report that was released recently that pointed to the Coli, Salmonella and other contaminants that are in these products that do not meet the regulations that have been promulgated by the state. We're gonna continue this aggressive action, making sure that we're seizing products. That is the priority of this task force, is the seizure of these products that do not meet the regulations of the state. These operators who are jumping the gun and participating outside of our market are really frustrating the goals that the state has and bringing this program to life. When we legalized part of the driving force and ending prohibition was a recognition that a regulated market will create safer products and promote public health. Now, because of folks who have decided to not follow or wait for the state to roll out additional licenses, that same goal is being frustrated. I would also add before I end that part of this endeavor was also to generate significant resources to communities that have been impacted across the state. So at least folks who are now participating in this market in this way, in these storefronts particularly, are not only selling products that are attractive to minors and are contaminated, but they're also cutting down on the resources that should be going to communities that have been impacted to fund after-school programs, continue adult education programs, reentry programs, all that was part of the promise of the MRTA. And so we're gonna continue to work with the city on this effort. We're pleased with the partnerships we've also developed with other law enforcement entities across the state to seize this product and make sure that our regulated market as it comes to life has the ability to succeed and thrive. Thank you. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Chris. Now, prior to this press conference, City Hall and Mayor Adams are hosting our first cannabis NYC roundtable with local card licenses and advocates. So I'd like to quickly acknowledge some of them, some of these individuals that are actually standing with us today, Bishop Mitchell Taylor, CEO and co-founder of Urban Upbound, Matthew Bernardo, President of Housing Works, Naomi Guerrero, CEO and co-founder of Noob NYC is actually one of the first Justice-Involved Card License recipients, Gabriel Marin, one of the first Justice-Involved Card License recipients, Gario Podorowski, Senior Vice President of the Doe Fund, Kevon Reed, Community Engagement Coordinator for Cannabis Workforce Initiative, Pilar de Jesus, from Take root Justice, Cheryl Murray Powell, CEO, COO of Justice Foundation, Shice Bub, co-founder of Smokers Club, Pre-License Legacy Operator, Esther Lelev, co-founder of Cultivated Community Foundations, Jesse Campo Amar, founder and CEO of Campo Amar & Sons, Jeffrey Hoffman, a cannabis attorney and Joshua Davis from WeMaps. Want to just quickly acknowledge the people that we are continuing to work with daily, day in and day out. And then I just wanted to share a few more marks as we think about enforcement. We can't talk about enforcement without talking about how are we creating the pathways for people to actually transition into the industry. New York City is on a mission, y'all. We're on a mission to become the number one global hub for cannabis industry excellence in education and equity across business, science and culture. We have a unified approach to deliver on this mission and already working with nearly a hundred people across the city, across multiple inter-agency work groups ranging from financing and business support to public education and outreach to enforcement. We're rapidly building an equity-centered framework to support New Yorkers facing on three pillars, entrepreneurship, economic development and enforcement. Now as we work with the state to establish this industry, cannabis and YC will remain a persistent and proactive advocate on behalf of the city's needs and its concerns. That means holding the line on restorative justice and economic recovery while also ensuring public health and safety are protected. And those looking to undermine the intent of New York's landmark legislation are held accountable. Now New Yorkers are just beginning to learn about the opportunities in the cannabis industry and there are many proactive steps that the city has begun to take to make sure that this is a safe and equitable industry, but we must overcome the entrenched stigmas from past criminalization of cannabis. The legislation was passed with the intention of undoing the harms of past criminalization and Mayor Adams launched cannabis and YC to support New Yorkers and justice-involved individuals who want to start thriving, legitimate cannabis-related businesses. There is a difference though, between the previously existing unlicensed legacy market that the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act was aimed at protecting and the more recent proliferation of visceral unlicensed smoke shops. The recent rise in these highly visible stores, selling illegal products has obviously and rightfully caused concern for many New Yorkers eroding some of the momentum that we've had with this initiative launch. So while we continue to rapidly build a strategic framework to support entrepreneurship and economic development, today we're really focused on sharing our approach, a three-prong approach to enforcement, which you're seeing in some of these signs. We have 10 city agencies and more working together, including the Sheriff's Office, as we've discussed, and the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. We are unified in our desire to facilitate transition into the legal industry for all interested New Yorkers to rehabilitate those off the path through outreach and education, and to enforce the law to protect New Yorkers and the opportunity for our collective success. A central mission for New York City is to definitely help the previously existing legacy operators to transition. So we're providing that support for pre-licensed entrepreneurs looking to launch a new business and navigate the state's licensing process, as well as workforce development to help New Yorkers gain access to good jobs in the industry. Cannabis NYC is here to support, and if you're interested in stepping into the industry, please visit our website at nyc.gov backslash cannabis to learn more. Lastly, I'll say equity must be protected, and the efforts cannabis justice advocates made to hold the line to ensure that, to ensure that communities most harm benefited from legalization should not be jeopardized by folks trying to skip the process. So it's a critical thing that we shine the light on the card licensees following the state's regulations, both justice involved and organizations supporting communities most harmed by prohibition. For this reason, I'm pleased to introduce our next speaker and recent card recipient, Erica Ford, an internationally recognized and widely respected peacemaker who has been at the forefront of reducing youth and community in New York City for over 30 years. Erica Ford, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The mayor said he got a star player and he did because she's not only good on the offense, she's good on the defense. Monday was December 12th. 35 years ago, on December 12th, I stepped into this work. And I think both of them were there when I stepped into the work. And they were on both sides, not literally, but in the streets with me, both the mayor and the sheriff, making sure that we got justice for our community that was under siege by the war on drugs, that we got justice for our community that was under siege by police brutality, that we got education around our kids going into special ed and getting Ritland and Thorzine. And then it grew into giving birth to a movement called the CMS system, right? That not only hired these individuals to come back into our community, but gave them real jobs and opportunity to now transform this community that was both generational trauma, vicarious trauma, indirect and not direct. Our communities have been destroyed. And we know that the resources are not there at a heavy basis as it is in other communities. And so with the resources from this economy, we can now begin to reinvest and build real equity to communities that have been destroyed. Families who not only went to jail, but people died, right? People died. And they died because of like, we saw a young man take his life the other day who everybody's talking about him now as we often do. But there's people with broken hearts and broken souls because their family was taken away and given 20 and 30 years in jail. We can't forget those people who took their lives, who then began taking drugs, who were taken away from their families and put in foster care and grew up in a system that broke their spirit. And so I'm here representing that community, representing those people on the front line. I am happy to get this license, right? And I'm happy to be a voice for equity. I'm happy to be a voice to rebuild this broken community after so much destruction. Thank you to all of y'all. Thank you. Thank you so much. Next up, we have council member Julie Menon, chair of committee on small business services. Thank you. Thank you so much. Well, first of all, I really wanna thank the mayor because quite frankly, a legal cannabis industry in New York City cannot prosper with bad actors. I am also the former commissioner of the department of consumer affairs. And I just mentioned that because I do have firsthand experience on how important it is to crack down on licensed sellers. During my tenure, we cracked down on synthetic marijuana, K2, where we had the same problem where it was being targeted to young people. Here again, we have these unlicensed businesses that are marketing a product to young people. You've heard from many speakers about the contaminants that are in the product that are truly dangerous. But it's also about undercutting the licensed cannabis small businesses. As a chair of the city council small business committee, we cannot allow this to happen. And so I wanna thank the mayor and the administration for this pilot program that is cracking down on these unlicensed businesses. It's so important to do that. We can't have a situation where our licensed cannabis small businesses are undercut before they even begin their operations. And that's why this action that the mayor has taken is so important. And so I'm really here to say thank you and in full support of this. Thank you. That said, I'll turn it over to the mayor for Q and A. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I think we highlighted over and over again what the goal is with the unlicensed industry that's popping up. We don't want them to get in a way of the legitimate industry. So our goal is not to incarcerate, it is to confiscate and educate that this is not how it is going to happen in New York. As we lift up this industry that we are all excited about and fought for to see materialized. I'm only open to a few questions. Hi, Mr. Mayor. How are you? I'm wondering the landlords that might rent to these businesses that are operating illegally, but what can all of you do to change? Great question. We have some ideas, but we're also going to reach out to the advocates who are here with us and state here's the problem. Come, let's come and devise a solution. So when it's time to go to Albany, then people won't feel as though this is city halls agenda. These are the folks who are in this industry. What do we do to make sure that we don't undermine what we attempted to achieve? We have some ideas, but we want to sit down to, that's the purpose of having Dashita so that she can sit down with the industry folks and say, what else do we need to do based on your observation so we can come with a coordinated approach to doing this? But there is an Albany fix that needs to be adjusted with some of these problems. What are some of those ideas as of now? We'll get to that. We're gonna roll it out. Mr. Mayor. How are you? Quite well. So on the way here, I stopped at four separate places that were selling various cannabis products and they, I can tell you that they were lined up two, three feet long, all different kinds of marijuana. They call it flower now. Anyway, I wonder what's gonna happen to these places and if you're gonna continue this pilot program to try to put these places out of business. Because for example, there was one in Times Square called Indoor Cannabis with a street sign telling you, listen, we have edibles, we have marijuana, we have everything that they possibly sell. And it's going on all over the city. There's one around the corner from here on Nassau Street. What's gonna happen to these businesses and what took so long to go after them? No, it didn't take long. First, let's look at what happened. The law was passed. Our headlines say selling weed is now legal. That's what people took. People didn't go into the story and say, is legal if you get the license? All they knew is, okay, you know what, weed is now legal. And so now we have to go back and make sure we communicate with people and say, yes, it's legal, but there's a process. And I think the failure of real education ahead of time and not just having a headline or a sound bite of that's why we are focused on not to, this is not an incarceration that we're trying to do. We're going to educate folks. We're going to use other methods to know you can't open here. But at the same time, we have the task force in place. Don't sleep on removing $4 million of product off the street, hundreds of thousand dollars, 100,000 pounds. This is a real initiative. And then a road is going to get on the street. Now listen, you can't just pop up and open a shop. Sheriff Miranda also led the towing of those trucks that were selling on our streets all over the city. But here's what we want to avoid. We don't want someone from another municipality, a large chain to come in and think they're going to undermine the industry here by putting the front money up to open these locations all over. That is what I believe is happening. And we want to zero in on those locations. Continue this pilot program to try to identify and go after all of these illegal places all over the city in old Harbor. Well, we're going to do several things. You know how we like to do. We need to look at what Sheriff Miranda and DCWP and NYP, we're going to look at what they did, do an analysis of that. We are currently instructed us to build out at database. So if ever someone observes it, we could have it in the database. We can start using a mapping system of say where they're located. And we want to start in going into the shops and say, hey man, you can't sell us. So if you're not willing to correct your behavior within a predetermined period of time, then your items are going to be confiscated and you're going to be fine. So there needs to be a real education campaign to let people know this is not how you do it and then show them this is how to do it. But we are not going to allow these stores to stay open and we're going to use a combination of the task force and some real education on the ground. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, on the point of when legalization took place, you just kind of touched on it a bit. It's been almost two years. Yes. The first recreational marijuana shop that's legal has still not opened in the store. Do you think that lags since legalization happened, no stores, but obviously a huge demand. Do you think that lags partially to blame for the illicit market growing? And then I guess in hindsight, do you think that those two things should have gone hand in hand legalization and launch of the legal market? Yeah, and we can't look in a rear view, Mayor. This is where we are right now. And I think that weight after passing the law and then the implementation clearly sent a signal. We have to get it right, Chris. I mean, when I look at some of the municipalities what's happening in others, it's a real problem. It's a real problem. It's not hitting the target audience. It is creating this black market that undermines the legal. And so we wanted to make sure we've waited for the state to do what they had to do. And then we brought on our expert here, but our number one goal, not commend the state, for saying we must get it right. Because if you get it wrong, you can really just endanger this entire industry and not too many municipalities have gotten it right. That's what we wanted to do, get it right. The illicit market has been flourishing? No, no, not at all. Not at all. I don't think it has gone wrong. We just have to make sure that people understand, educate, confiscate, and not incarcerate. That's the goal here. Combination, DCWP, the Sheriff's Office, New York City Police Department, and all agencies. You know my mindset, the whole team has to get on board with solving a problem. We don't operate in silos in this administration. Whatever tool is needed, Sheriff Miranda has been the team leader on this because there are powers that he has that's different from what the New York City Police Department could do. And we don't want this to be a police led initiative. That's not our desire here. And so the whole release of penalties, anyone knows the penalty of what it is? You know the penalties? Yeah, so we have quite a few penalties for this activity. Not only are folks who are operatinglessly breaking our state cannabis law, but they're also breaking penal law, municipal law, and tax law. And so right now with the products that have been seized, it's actually, I think it's closer to $5 million now based on the activities that our officers have been doing together, there are state tax penalties also that are a part of that. We have an illicit tax penalty that's fined by the Graham. And so the State Department of Tax and Finance will be working that out as we measure out everything and appropriately write that bill to these operators. But there are still additional penalties that can come from our cannabis law as well as I know the municipality has some penalties as well. I'm sorry? Can you give a dollar figure? A dollar figure? Yeah, it depends on the type of product. It can go up to $400 to $500 per gram depending on the product. So it depends per operation. And we have to look at that because part of the law, the weight part of it, we believe that there's a real flaw in that area and that's the place we're gonna look at. I don't know the penalties because I don't buy weed illegally. That's not what I was talking about. So these locations, I assume a lot of them are more like smoke shops that sell other products, but in addition we're selling illegal- Cigarettes? But there are some locations that advertise themselves as dispensaries where they only sell cannabis products. So is there a mechanism to actually shut those businesses down or is it just the fines and the seizures? It's a combination and that's what the team is going to look like. We don't want, I think Erika really pointed out, we don't want to create another pipeline of negative impacts that we've witnessed. We fought for this. Tony Miranda who's the head of the Latinos' Offices Association, head of the 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement, Erika Ford. We were on the ground, we fought for this and we're not going to get a law and then now go back to what we fought not to happen. And so our goal is educate, confiscate and make sure that people are doing the right thing, not incarcerate. That is our focus and we know we can do it. We can do it with the right balance. Trust me, if you lose a million dollars of product, you're not looking to open another store. Because now you, the best way to become educated is to have your stuff confiscated. You know what the two felony arrests were for? You know what they were for? The felony arrests? The two felony arrests were for criminal possession in the first degree and criminal possession in the second degree based on the volume that we seized from the locations. The volume was higher than everybody else. And the, between DCWP, our office and the police department, the average fines when we finish a location is anything between $30,000 to $50,000 worth of notices of violations and oath hearings that they have to go to. What's the threshold for when they would actually be, when you're actually arrested? It depends on the amount of confiscation that we find in the legal product that we find in the location. But that's not our goal and what we're going to have, the chief of department do, Jeff Madry and chief of patrol, John Shell, what they're going to do, officers on routine patrol, you see one of these locations to go in, hand out some information. Listen, you can't operate. This is illegal, this product that you're selling is illegal. Here's the way to do it. That's how we can be proactive and engage in a conversation. You know, have local precents, do an analysis, if you have one of these illegal shops in your area, send in the community affairs office and engage in a conversation. We would rather people close down on their own than having to go in and carry this out. That's the way we want to do it. Thank you. What's up, Steve? Good to see you. 53 is obviously just giving the surface of the problem here. It's to some extent like playing whack-a-mole. I heard from some advocates that there should be some kind of process down the line to fold a lot of these shops into the legal market. I wanted to see if that's at all a consideration here. Down the road in this process might be a question from Mr. Alexander, too, if there's some way to get them into the process legally down the road. Well, on our end, and you can respond as well, but on our end, those are the feedback, that's the feedback we want to hear from people who are in the industry. We want this to be an industry-led response. And if they believe there's a pathway to do so, we're open to that. And Dashita is going to be filling those questions of how do we respond to this? So this can be community-led. And that's what's important to us. You wouldn't respond to it. Yeah, thank you for that. Now, the governor started with a commitment to education, right? We started, yes, the bill passed in March, but I wasn't appointed until September. And as we got up and running in December and January, the first thing we started doing was trying to educate these illicit operators. In every state that's legalized, there's been a proliferation in some way, shape, or form. This is New York City, so we're seeing the storefronts pop up in more ways than one. And other municipalities and other states has been just increased illicit activity. So we're trying to take a unique approach, one starting with education, as the mayor has said. We issued hundreds of cease and desist letters to these operators trying to give them a chance to pull back that jump that they've made. Part of that communication was also the fact that if they continue that activity after being told by our office to stop, that they put at risk their ability to secure a license in the market that we're building. And so we have folks who have gotten cease and desist letters and later applied for licensing that won't be able to advance, all right? And so we're gonna continue to investigate this and investigate all these illicit operations, but absolutely the consequence of their continued illicit activity after being told to stop is they're not being able to participate in the market that we're building. Legal dispensers on 125th Street in Harlem, we just heard from the bid saying they're against it. They have safety concerns. They have traffic flow concerns. Mr. Mayor, I know you talk a lot about nimbyism in the form of housing. Does that extend to dispensaries too? What would you say to this bid? No, listen, that's a great bid in Harlem. We've been working with them. I know Chief Madri has been working with them to deal with some of the issues that are up there, particularly around illegal drug use. And part of the conversation is to go to the bids. It is to go to the community boards and to engage people. And I think it helps business. You smoke a joint, you get munchies, you're gonna go into the bodega and get something to eat. All these businesses are gonna benefit from the foot traffic that is going to come with these industry opens. And so this is new. Everyone knows that whatever happens new, people are afraid of that first. That's part of the process. It's new, we gotta get adjusted to the newness, but it's gonna fit right into the market. I want to do a few off topic. We're gonna free y'all up to from this bloody man of salt. That's our conversation. Thank you so much. All right, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, brother. I'll be happy that you need it. Yes, yes, love it, love it. All right, Anthony. Mm-hmm. You leave the stuff or leave it on the floor? No, you grab it. You grab it. Take it out of here? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, do a few. Can't do a lot, cause I got a holiday party tonight with the press, so I need to be rested. Yes, it is. You have someone that's interested, you know? Yes, yes, it is. We are still looking to vet in some of the people who have put in for it, but we're still looking. There's no secret. I hate rats. We have communicated with several people, and they showed a little bit too much compassion towards me for rats, and I'm not trying to, they must have the killer instinct that I will have. You know? And so that's what we're looking for. We're looking for a fierce warrior to go after rats. So all of that, well, they have families too. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, a city council member came to me the other day and said that, you know, I think you guys are unfair. Every person should have a cellular phone with, you know, a data plan. And, you know, once they finish, you know, it's like, listen, let's get clear here. Let's have a reality check. We are going to provide a bed, food, child, children in school. We're gonna do our job, and we're doing better than any other municipality. So people who are stayed in all these other things, and I say to particularly some of my people in office, use your discretionary dollars. If that's what you feel we should do, you have a discretionary account, go take your discretionary dollars and go buy cellular phone, the new iPhone for everyone. We're not doing that. We're going to provide the services that we can provide without breaking the bank for the city. This is some serious money that we're spending because we're doing the right thing as a city. And we're going to continue to do the right thing, but we have New Yorkers here with real issues in the city that I have to address. Yes, yes, we, I spoke with both the minority leader in Congress, Hakeem Jeffries. I spoke with Senator Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate. We have been in constant contact with the White House. We've communicated with Albany. Here's where we are now. New Yorkers, we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars. No one has helped us, no one. We have not gotten a dime from anyone. That has to stop. We need help. This is an obligation on a national level and it's an obligation on a state level. We must help New York City. We took the brunt, but we need help because New Yorkers deserve to make sure when our cutting programs are doing something that's hurtful to everyday New Yorkers. What's going on? Yep, it's going very well. And Kishan, Commissioner Sewell has been zeroed and there are three areas that I put in place of a small working group in government, governing the New York City Police Department and Commissioner Sewell picked parts of it. One of the members came from City Hall. That's a civilianization. We need to get police officers doing patrol, what they were hired to do. Special victims looking at the failures that may have occurred in sex crime. And the third is the disciplinary process. It should not take three years, two years, four years for people to go through the process. We need to streamline it and they have presented the first wave of that. They're going to present the next wave of that. We had to tweak some of the things I didn't like. We're going to get it right and we're going to streamline the disciplinary process. It should not take this long. It's unfair to the person who's being charged and it's unfair to the city to keep an officer on the books who's not suitable to wear a uniform and understand the nobility of public safety. Thank you. Mr. Mayor, I want to ask about data we got a hold of earlier this week about the subway safety plan. It shows that all those individuals who accepted shelter replacement as part of the subway safety plan, more than two thirds of them left the shelter system within a week. I'm wondering if that type of data gets you any cause about whether this initiative is working as it should. Do you think something needs to be amended? Okay, two third left. What about the one third? One third is no longer living on our system. I mean, you know, you may not be old enough to remember the commercial. You can look at something half full or half empty. I look at it a third of success of where others were afraid to go. Let's be clear on that. Others were afraid to go into the subway system and say, we're going to engage you and give you service. Now, we're gonna look at what happened to those two thirds. Some of those two thirds may have gone back home with their families. Some of those two thirds may have decided I want to go and get employed for myself or get a job and go into a center. We took an initiative to say we were gonna move all encampments on our subways. We don't have any more encampments on our subways. No more internal areas, no more hiding in the grates. You can't see them and we continue to seek that. And a third of the people we went after have decided to stay in the system. I consider that to be a real thumbs up. And now let's go after those two thirds and find out what do we need to do with those two thirds so we can continue to erode the process until we could have a complete 100% success rate. But I am extremely pleased at the team on what they're doing. My first one I pointed out, the illegal sale of cannabis. There was a store in Bethesdaivison that started the whole ball rolling that there was an illegal store in Bethesdaivison selling and that's how we got on our radar. No, you had the joint rolling. From the federal government. And also how much more do you anticipate to ask them? It's a billion dollars now but if continuing education services, shelter, schools, et cetera, how big could that? Listen, it's bad, it's bad. And the projected numbers we have to continue to evaluate we're looking at the end of this fiscal year. But it's bad. This is a national problem and the national government has a responsibility to number one, have a decompression strategy to resolve the issues at the border to make the municipalities whole who had to take away from their citizens to pay for this. We should not be paying for this and we need help from Washington D.C. and help from the state. We're all in this together. Why does the government hope they listen to you or hear your calls for this money? Well, we are pleased to see that we are seeing some movement. We are cautiously optimistic that this is resonating. We have a few days before the borders, before the issue is back in front of us and there are things that are happening based on our conversation. We're gonna remain cautiously optimistic but the reality is, New York deserves help. New Yorkers should not be paying for this out of their pockets. The Speaker Adams put out a housing plan today. I was wondering if you had any thoughts about it. It's focused on what she says is various and affordability. I'm wondering if you guys are on the same page when it comes to affordability as a percentage of New Yorkers. Well, you know, I cannot thank her enough. We would not have gotten Innovation Queen's pass without her and her team. We would not have gotten the Brockner project. We would not have gotten the Willis Point project done. When you do an analysis of, you know, she has had the ability to come to the table and focus on we have to get housing and we're going to look over her plan. We look forward to working side by side to her. We are on the same page that we need to build more housing. That's the only way we're going to deal with this housing crisis that we're facing and that is to build more housing and we're gonna look at the plan and we're excited about her putting out the plan and we think we're gonna find some common ground on it. Okay.