New York’s Cash-On-Delivery List: Lifeline, or Landmine?

In any regulated market, non-payment has become one of the quiet killers. New Mexico knows this too well — months-old invoices, broken promises, and producers taking the hit while regulators sit on the sidelines.

New York has decided to step in where New Mexico never has. The OCM has built a mechanism designed to force financial discipline: The C.O.D. list; Miss a payment on a credit purchase, and you get cut off from credit statewide. Simple, brutal, effective — at least on paper.

The Good: A Hard Brake on Chronic Non-Payment

The spirit behind the C.O.D. system is honest. Producers in early markets get burned — they float product on net terms, the retailer doesn’t pay, and the whole supply chain buckles.

New York tried to fix that with guardrails:

• Payment is due 30 days after delivery.

• If unpaid, suppliers report the delinquency within a week.

• OCM adds the retailer to the Cash-On-Delivery list.

• Once on it, no one in the state can extend credit.

This is the one part that actually works. It stops the game of “vendor roulette” — paying just enough people to keep the lights on while everyone else hangs dry. New Mexico operators fantasize about this kind of accountability. A list like that, enforced by the regulator, would’ve saved a lot of small farms from being bled out over the last two years.

The Bad: A Clock That Doesn’t Care About Reality

Where New York veers off into bureaucratic absurdity is the assumption that every product is sellable the moment it hits the floor.

In the real world, that’s a lucky privilege. Tests get held up. Labels need reprinting. A producer miscalculates percentages. A retailer might be sitting on product they legally cannot sell — but the clock still ticks.

OCM ties the 30 days to delivery, not readiness. It doesn’t pause for quality issues. It doesn’t stop for lab delays. And it certainly doesn’t care that the retailer might be stuck with unusable product.

The system protects producers, but doesnt leave much support for retailers.

The Ugly: One Supplier’s Report Becomes Everyone’s Punishment

This is the part that would make any New Mexico operator spit out their Blakes breakfast burrito.

If one supplier reports you as delinquent — even if you dispute it — every supplier in the state is barred from offering you credit. Not just the one with the issue. All of them.

This means:

• A single bad claim can freeze your purchasing power.

• A disagreement turns into a statewide financial penalty.

• Even after resolution, the reputation hit lingers.

There’s no nuance. No scoring system. No review period before public posting. No consequences for a supplier filing garbage paperwork out of spite, sloppiness, or confusion.

The Lingering Questions

The C.O.D. system might be the most aggressive anti-delinquency tool any state has rolled out, but they have only recently adopted METRC, so many of these maybe be non-issues and unanswered questions:

• What happens when product arrives defective or mislabeled?

• Why doesn’t the clock pause until the retailer can legally sell it?

• Why is one disputed report enough to choke off all credit?

• Why isn’t there a verification step before a business is publicly shamed?

• Why doesn’t the rule punish suppliers who file inaccurate notices?

• Why can’t suppliers use their own discretion to extend credit if they trust the retailer?

• What about ancillary vendors — labs, packaging, transport — who also suffer from non-payment but aren’t included?

What It Means for Markets Like New Mexico

New Mexico sits at the opposite extreme. No enforcement. No intervention. No system for resolving disputes or protecting suppliers from going unpaid for months. New York is content to ref every interaction in a padded ring, New Mexico is content with letting license holders duke it out in the streets.

Somewhere between these two poles lies a real solution — one that accounts for defective product, bad test results, human error, and the complicated dance between buyers and sellers in a young, volatile industry.

The C.O.D. list is a step toward sanity, but it’s also a warning. Regulation can save a market, or it can strangle it depending on how well it understands the messy reality it’s trying to govern.