Nonna Farms renews its demand for a hearing and says the Office of Cannabis Management is repeating the same conduct its own judges condemned in the Omnium Health case a year ago
ALBANY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / September 24, 2026 / Nonna Farms, LLC, the first social equity registered organization licensed in New York’s medical cannabis program, submitted a renewed request for a hearing before the New York State Office of Cannabis Management (OCM) on charges the agency brought against it in November 2025. Nonna Farms first requested that hearing on December 8, 2025, on OCM’s own form. It never got one. OCM has since told its own tribunal it is unaware the request was ever made, even though OCM itself filed the signed form as an exhibit this month.
In the year since OCM inspectors walked Nonna Farms’ 55-acre outdoor farm in Vernon, New York, the crop the agency proposed to destroy has been harvested, stored at an OCM-approved facility, quarantined, weighed twice at OCM’s request, and never sold. No hearing was held. No destruction order was issued. On September 22, 2026, one year to the day after the inspection, OCM’s Deputy Counsel wrote that based on the current condition of the cannabis, OCM cannot permit it to be sold.
The crop sat too long because it was waiting on OCM.
Four Requests. No Answers.
No medical cannabis company in New York had ever grown outdoors. OCM has stated under penalty of perjury that outdoor cultivation was not even an option on its application, and that the agency changed its own policy to accommodate Nonna Farms as the first social equity applicant. There was no rulebook. OCM stated one requirement in writing: security. Nonna Farms met it the same day with fencing, 42 cameras, perimeter alarms, flood lighting and 24-hour on-site staffing.
Between May 21 and June 20, 2025, Nonna Farms wrote to OCM four times asking for authorization to plant and for a pre-operational inspection. It disclosed its planting date in advance. It copied the Chair of the Cannabis Control Board. It offered unannounced visits. OCM did not reply to any of it. With seedlings dying, Nonna Farms planted.
OCM approved the location on July 25, 2025 without a word about the planting. On August 4, it asked Nonna Farms to measure its flowering canopy and told it how. On August 18, Nonna Farms reported 36 acres, a larger figure than OCM itself later measured, and sent photographs of the crop. OCM did not respond. Five weeks later it inspected. On November 12, OCM’s Director of Compliance told Nonna Farms on a recorded call that this was not the commencement of a disciplinary proceeding. Fourteen days later, OCM charged the company with operating without the inspection it had requested, planting before the approval OCM delayed, and exceeding a canopy limit on the figure Nonna Farms had volunteered.
Nonna Farms Does Not Recognize the 100,000 Square Foot Cap
Nonna Farms does not recognize OCM’s attempt to cap its outdoor grow at 100,000 square feet. This is a medical license, and Vernon was the first outdoor medical cannabis grow ever permitted in New York. The 100,000 square foot tier was selected on Nonna Farms’ application for an indoor facility in Castleton. OCM has admitted that outdoor cultivation was not even an option on that application.
No regulation, no case and no OCM order sets a canopy limit for an outdoor medical grow. The only outdoor canopy caps are in the adult-use rules, which do not contemplate an outdoor medical license, and even those rules allow outdoor farms more canopy than indoor facilities because an outdoor farm harvests once a year while an indoor facility harvests several times. OCM is charging Nonna Farms with breaking a limit that was never written for an outdoor medical farm and was never applied to one before.
A Settlement OCM Proposed, Then Abandoned
On March 3, 2026, OCM proposed a settlement framework: Nonna Farms would keep its licensed product and sell the disputed remainder, surrendering the proceeds to the State. Nonna Farms accepted in writing three days later and identified a buyer. OCM took 133 days to take its first substantive written position. By then the buyer was gone. On the same day Nonna Farms warned that the buyer would walk, OCM said it would not recommend the company’s pending dispensary locations, which were the other sales channel OCM’s own framework relied on.
On August 26, two days before OCM’s next settlement response was due, inspectors arrived unannounced at the storage facility to weigh the product. They did not weigh it. They shut the facility down with a Stop Work Order that afternoon. On September 3, OCM declared its interest in settlement “extinguished” and said it would seek appropriate relief. Three weeks later it has sought none. There is still no seizure, no lab test, no destruction order and no hearing. There is only a crop that can no longer be sold.
The Same Mistakes as a Year Ago
OCM has been told exactly what this conduct is. In OCM v. Omnium Health, Inc., decided in July and November 2025, OCM’s own Office of Administrative Hearings ruled that holding perishable cannabis indefinitely is essentially a destruction order, because the product loses value until it is worthless. The tribunal held that such a restraint is a sanction that requires a hearing first, and that a hearing held after the product has been constructively destroyed is not meaningful. OCM took no exceptions to those decisions.
A year later, OCM has done the same thing again, this time to the first social equity licensee in the State. It held the product, withheld the hearing, and let time do what no order ever authorized. Nonna Farms will ask the tribunal to find that OCM departed from its own Omnium precedent without explanation.
An Agency Not Being Run Properly
Nonna Farms’ experience fits a pattern of instability at the top of OCM. In 2024, the Governor launched an operational overhaul of the agency to clear licensing bottlenecks and improve communication with applicants and licensees. In December 2025, the Governor removed OCM’s acting Executive Director and its Deputy Counsel in the wake of the Omnium matter. The agency operated under an acting Executive Director from February 2026 until a Senate confirmation in June 2026.
Inside Nonna Farms’ own matter, OCM’s Executive Director changed, its General Counsel changed, and the file passed from one attorney to another and then to a third. Calls were postponed. Letters went unanswered. Deadlines OCM set for itself passed without action. Nonna Farms does not claim anyone at OCM set out to destroy its crop. It states plainly that OCM did not have the people, the process or the leadership to follow through on its own commitments, and that every time OCM went silent, the cost landed on the licensee.
What Is at Stake
OCM’s own charging document valued the crop at up to $127,140,000. Nonna Farms’ own estimate in April 2026, when a buyer was ready, was $6.8 million. Both figures are now close to zero. Nonna Farms’ social equity owners borrowed more than $7 million on OCM’s express promise that “the compliance unit will work closely with you as you work toward operationalizing in New York State.” The company has had no revenue since the 2025 harvest, carries that debt secured by the crop, and now faces foreclosure by its lender.
“We asked OCM for an inspection. We asked for approval. We reported our canopy when they asked for it. We accepted the settlement they wrote,” said a spokesperson for Nonna Farms. “Every time, the answer was either delay or silence, and every time, we paid for it. A year ago OCM’s own judges told the agency that holding a crop until it rots is a destruction order. OCM did it again, to the first social equity licensee in New York. That is a regulator failing at its most basic job. Social equity means nothing if the agency charged with delivering it cannot answer its mail.”
What Nonna Farms Is Asking For
Nonna Farms has asked OCM’s Office of Administrative Hearings to docket the hearing on all three charges, set a preliminary conference within ten days, and assign an Administrative Law Judge on an expedited basis. At the hearing, the company will ask the tribunal to find that the charges are not established, that the 100,000 square foot indoor tier does not apply to an outdoor medical grow, that OCM’s restraint on its product rests on no provision of the Cannabis Law or its regulations, that the crop was destroyed without due process, and that OCM’s position departs from its own Omnium Health precedent without a stated reason.
Nonna Farms is represented by Patrick J. Hines of Hodgson Russ LLP. The company is prepared to proceed on any date the tribunal sets. It has been prepared since December 8, 2025.
About Nonna Farms, LLC
Nonna Farms, LLC is the first social equity registered organization licensed under New York’s medical cannabis program.
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Media Contact: Robert Kato | 917-753-6000 | bobbykato@gmail.com
SOURCE: Nonna Farms LLC
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