On a windy, gray morning earlier this month, the lights were on at Citiva Medical, Brooklyn’s first medical dispensary. The store opened its doors on December 30th, and a sort of soft launch was still underway. After passing through an elegant, blue-tiled anteroom, I encountered a thrum of activity: a TV news crew interviewed the dispensary’s resident pharmacist, employees darted around the brightly-lit space, and a diverse crowd of customers trickled in, all with big smiles.

While Citiva’s launch certainly merits celebration—it’s about time that this borough of 2.6 million got a dispensary of its own—it also highlights the draconian policies that New York’s state government has imposed on the skeleton crew of dispensaries currently operating in New York.

Citiva is one of ten companies that won licenses to open dispensaries in New York after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act in 2014. There are currently 30-odd dispensaries open for business around the state, with at least a dozen more on the way.

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