Now more than ever, local news matters.
Now more than ever, local news matters.
Strain Stars, a 14,000-square-foot cannabis dispensary, touted by its owners as a “superstore” and the largest in the state, celebrated its grand opening in Riverhead yesterday.
The grand opening drew a crowd of shoppers who lined up around the building on the corner of Old Country Road and Kroemer Avenue to enter the store, Strain Stars’ second location. Its first location, which opened in July 2023 on Route 110 in Farmingdale, was Long Island’s first recreational marijuana store.
Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard and Council Member Bob Kern were on hand for the grand opening ribbon cutting ceremony yesterday. Strain Stars CFO Jasmin Kaur snipped the ribbon.
The family-owned and operated company has sold more than $100 million in cannabis products since it opened in Farmingdale last summer, Strain Stars said in a press release.
“It’s been an incredible whirlwind ride since we first opened on that hot summer day in 2023,” Kaur said. “That morning, our family never imagined we were launching America’s #1 legal cannabis dispensary, we just wanted to do right by our neighbors and customers on Long Island,”she said.
Strain Stars’ Riverhead location, at 1871 Old Country Road, is the third state-licensed recreational marijuana shop to open on the East End, and the seventh on Long Island. Columbia Care, which has operated a medical marijuana dispensary on East Main Street since January 2016, has also been licensed by the state to operate a nonmedical (“adult-use”) retail dispensary at the same site. It has not yet begun adult-use retail sales there.
In addition to the state licensed retail dispensaries, there are currently 10 retail marijuana shops operating on the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton and at least five on the Poospatauk Reservation in Mastic.
According to the State Office of Cannabis Management, there are 261 state-licensed adult-use cannabis dispensaries operating in New York State. Their operations provide a financial boost for state and local governments. There is a 13% sales tax on adult-use retail sales, which includes a 9% state excise tax and a 4% local tax. The local tax is split between the host county and the city, town, or village where the dispensary is located. Through October, adult-use cannabis sales in New York generated $22 million in local sales tax revenues.
The potential for sales tax revenues from marijuana sales was an incentive for local government officials to agree to allow retail dispensaries in their municipalities, an uncomfortable decision for many local officials because the decriminalization of marijuana and legalization of retail sales remained a controversial topic when the state enacted the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act in March 2021. The law gave local municipalities a limited time to “opt out” of retail marijuana sales, which required the passage of a local law. On Long Island, every town except Babylon, Brookhaven, Southampton and Riverhead passed local laws to opt out. Every village also opted out.
In Riverhead Town, the local law to opt-out failed in a 3-2 split vote of the Town Board in 2021. Former Supervisor Yvette Aguiar and Council Member Ken Rothwell supported the opt-out law. Hubbard, along with former council members Frank Beyrodt and Catherine Kent voted no.
Strain Stars is the second retail recreational marijuana shop to open in the Town of Riverhead. The first, Beleaf, opened on Middle Country Road in Calverton last month.
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