New York Regulators Issue Warnings About "Gift Pot"

It may sound like a clever workaround: Buy a snack pack for $50 and get a "free gift" of recreational marijuana! New York State officials say, 'not so fast.'

Getty Images/ Stephen Brashear

While New York works to launch a legal recreational marijuana market, some entrepreneurs have jumped into a legal gray area.

They say they’re not selling pot but are giving it away while people buy something else. Now, the state says they need to stop.

he Office of Cannabis Management said Tuesday, February 8 it sent letters to more than two dozen enterprises it suspects of illegally selling weed.

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They were told to stop or face fines and potential criminal charges. The agency wouldn’t say what entities got letters.

The state law legalizing recreational marijuana doesn’t discuss such “gifts” but does allow “transferring, without compensation” small amounts of pot. So, apparently, a gift of ganja for your Valentine is okay?

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To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood