The first New Jersey marijuana dispensary opened Thursday
morning, following years of political battles since such establishments
were legalized in the state.
New York Magazine's Daily Intel blog summed it up as "kind of a bummer."
While patients shuffled in and out of the Greenleaf Compassion Center
for scheduled appointments, mostly keeping away from the hordes of
press, at least two guys had no problem providing commentary: "It will
give people a chance to, you know, relax," one man, smoking a joint
outside the dispensary -- with weed acquired elsewhere -- told the New York Post.
New Jersey officially legalized medical marijuana in January 2010, but uncertainty regarding federal backlash kept state-sanctioned marijuana off the market until recently.
The Greenleaf dispensary is the first to complete the application and
permitting process required to receive approval from local officials,
according to the NJ.com.
Though medical marijuana dispensaries have reason to cheer in New
Jersey, similar establishments on the opposite coast are ticked off.
In Washington, where marijuana was recently approved for recreational use,
dispensaries are fearing a drop-off in business. They lobbied hard
against recreational legalization and "now risk relinquishing that
lucrative marketplace to new competitors."
An Applebee's New York area franchisee is the latest CEO to
go public threatening drastic plans to avoid costs associated with the
Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.
"We've calculated it will [cost] some millions of dollars across our
system. So what does that say -- that says we won't build more
restaurants. We won't hire more people," Zane Tankel, chairman and CEO
of Apple-Metro, told Fox Business Network on Thursday.
Apple-Metro, which runs 40 Applebee's restaurants, employs from 80 to
300 people at each of its locations. Obamacare mandates that businesses
with more than 50 workers must offer an approved insurance plan or pay a
penalty of $2,000 for each full-time worker over 30 workers.
Most small businesses with 50 or more employees already do offer
health insurance, notes John Arensmeyer, CEO and founder of Small
Business Majority, a national small business advocacy organization. But
restaurant chains typically are among the sliver of businesses not
offering insurance to workers. Other food chains have commented publicly
that they would take strong measures to avoid the effects of Obamacare,
but so far none of them have taken that action.
Darden Restaurants, owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster, said that it would increase the number of part-time workers to skirt the law, while Jimmy John Liautaud, founder of Jimmy John's Gourmet Sandwiches chain, also recently told Fox Business News that he is considering cutting workers' hours.
Applebee's owner Tankel wouldn't go so far as saying he would lay off
current employees or cut their hours to keep them part-time rather than
pay for their health care, but he did hint that those were distinct
possibilities. "The model's been set. I am sure all our people are
watching this right now so I don't want to make any commitments one way
or another," he said. "I want to simply say we are looking at it, we are
evaluating. If it's possible to do without cutting people back, I am
delighted to do it, but that also rolls back expansion, it rolls back
hiring more people, and in a best-case scenario, we only shrink the
labor force minimally. Best case."
"We have to do that. There's no other way we can survive it, because
we think it will cost us 50 cents a sandwich. That's just the actual
cost," Liautaud said. "If you have 40 or 50 employees at a restaurant,
and the penalty is $2,000, and you're going to pay $80,000 or $100,000
penalty, there goes the profit in your restaurant."
Tankel also felt he had little choice in what he called a "fragile
environment" but to cut employees or their hours: "In this environment,
you can't raise prices, particularly in our space. It's not possible.
Efficiencies, hopefully we got all of our efficiencies. We've just faced
three terrible years in the environment and the economy. We've been
enforcing and putting more and more in every year. So then it's cut back
on overhead." Christine
Eibner, senior economist at RAND Corp. who has analyzed health
insurance costs for small businesses and studied the health care law,
doesn't think cutting hours is the only option firms have. "They could,
if they wanted, opt to provide health insurance to these individuals,"
Eibner told The Huffington Post in an email. "Most economists believe
that -- one way or another -- the costs of the health insurance are
ultimately born by workers, such as through reductions in wages or other
benefits."
"The decision is complicated, and may depend on factors such as
workers' eligibility for exchange subsidies, whether it is plausible to
reduce wages or other benefits to cover health insurance costs, and
worker preferences for wages versus health coverage," Eibner added. "The
penalties for not having insurance will likely increase workers'
relative preference for insurance over wages, which could push some
firms toward offering."
The Huffington Post tried to reach Tankel and Liautaud for further
explanation about their decisions and if and when they planned to act on
them, but neither immediately responded to requests for comment.
Whether their comments were made publicly to sincerely express
financial desperation or to simply attempt to tarnish Obamacare,
Arensmeyer said it seems "counterproductive to criticize" the law at
this point. "Now that the election is over, if there's any political
motivation behind it, I'm not sure what the objective is," he said.
"It's the law of the land, and there's no chance it's going to be
repealed after the reelection of the president and the Supreme Court decision earlier this year, and we think it's time for all businesses to come together and figure out how to make this work."
The furor over Obamacare has come with a price. Arensmeyer said the
organization's polling and outreach shows business leaders'
understanding of the law is "very poor, and that's because of all the
negative noise and the lack of focus on the facts. This has been highly
politicized, and there has been a lot more heat than light shown on this
whole issue over the last two and a half years," he said. "There has
been way too much effort spent criticizing it and way too little effort
figuring out how to make it work and getting it implemented."
