Dozens of businesses have received strongly worded letters from the state Office of Cannabis Management to stop selling marijuana products illegally.

The operators of those businesses, should they persist in selling mariijuana, could face significant fines and possible criminal penalties, regulators said in “cease and desist” letters to the businesses. “Unlicensed sales undermine the legal market that is being built by introducing products that are not lab-tested and potentially threaten public safety,” warns the letters sent out by the Cannabis Management Enforcement Division.

It’s comical that cease and desist letters are the state’s response. It is the state that has dragged its feet, hemmed and hawed, sat atop its thinking rock pontificating about the moral purity of the state’s social equity strategy in marijuana business and, in so doing, created this situation. There are people who want marijuana products, there are people who to sell marijuana products, and there are New York state officials sitting high atop Mt. Sinai like Moses for more than a year crafting the stone tablets that will contain the rules and regulations to govern the market.

If the state wanted to send a message about the sale of marijuana, it would enforce its existing law rather than send letters. After all, the state started sending letters more than a year ago and the number of businesses in the marijuana trade has increased, not decreased. Even with the decriminalization of marijuana in 2021, the sale of marijuana still comes with misdemeanor and felony charges for those selling 25 grams or more punishable by between one and seven years in jail and a fine between $1,000 and $15,000.

But doing so would create more people with marijuana charges on their records, which goes against the social equity provisions the state is so busy virtue-signaling in every news release and public utterance from the state Office of Cannabis Management.

What avenue does that leave the state? Strongly worded letters. What a joke.