New York allowed pot shops to open too close to schools. Now they might have to move

Since New York began licensing recreational marijuana stores about three years ago, the state has been using a simple tactic to ensure pot shops are kept a legally-mandated distance from local schools: Measure from the door of the dispensary to the door of the school.

But officials recently made a startling admission: They’d misread the law and had been measuring incorrectly the whole time. Now, about 100 cannabis shops are in limbo, crossing their fingers for a legislative fix while wondering whether they’ll have to relocate.

The news was like dropping “a grenade in the laps” of business owners, said Osbert Orduña, who owns a New York City dispensary called The Cannabis Place that is now deemed to be too close to a nearby preschool.

“The way that they executed this was a complete and u