The new Potsdam cannabis dispensary owners, Aurora Woods, left, and Kinsey LaPointe stand near their ‘The Highest Peak’ store sign as they prepare for opening day, Dec. 7. NCNow photo
BY ADAM ATKINSON
North Country This Week
POTSDAM — The village’s first cannabis dispensary, The Highest Peak at 25 Market St., will officially open for business Thursday, Dec. 7.
The shop’s opening has been stalled by months of legal wrangling between the State Supreme Court and the state Office of Cannabis Management, but after Thursday the wait for The Highest Peak is over.
The owners, Aurora Wood and Kinsey LaPointe, are planning a grand opening day Thursday, complete with a ribbon cutting ceremony with the Potsdam Chamber of Commerce at 1 p.m. A DJ will be playing music and shop clerks will be on hand to educate the public on the health benefits of using cannabis. The new cannabis store will offer pre-packaged state-approved cannabis and CBD products from specifically approved growers. No consumption will be allowed on the site, under state law. Patrons must be 21 and older.
It’s been a slow burn leading up to The Highest Peak’s opening day. LaPointe and Wood have been working on setting up shop since getting their site plan approved by the village last spring. They initially were pushing for a July opening date, but the state had other plans.
The state-managed process of obtaining a Conditional Adult-Use Retail Dispensary (CAURD) license to legally sell cannabis in an approved store space comes with a certain amount of red tape and bureaucracy to wade through. Read more about that at https://bit.ly/3IF9fm3.
Add to the normally time consuming process a ruling in August by State Supreme Court Judge Kevin Bryant that halted approvals for state CAURD licensees to open shops. Twenty-three shops which were initially given the go ahead and then stopped from moving forward by the moratorium, including The Highest Peak, were left to be considered on a case-by-case basis by the…
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