They couldn’t have screwed this up any worse if they tried.

It should have been simple for New York to set up its legal weed market: You put out a call for entrepreneurs, evaluate their pitches and let the best qualified folks set up weed dispensaries.

Easy, right? Especially when officials at the top levels of state government and the Legislature are committed to the cause of recreational weed. Nothing should have stood in the way of a quick establishment of the legal weed marketplace here.

But nothing is ever that simple in New York, and there’s been no shortage of unnecessary self-inflicted wounds as the state has stumbled to get the marketplace up and running.

The biggest fumble so far has been the state deciding to place “justice involved individuals” at the head of the line when it came to approving dispensary licenses.

That meant that those who’d been convicted of marijuana-related crimes here when weed was illegal, many of them members of minority communities, were the priority for the state.

It was a great move when it came to virtue-signaling, especially with social justice protests against police a not-too-distant memory, but it turns out to have been very bad for the legal weed business.

That’s because the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act dictated that justice-involved individuals as well as minority- and women-owned businesses, distressed farmers and disabled veterans were all supposed to receive favored treatment when it came to weed licenses.

But the state had only been granting licenses to those with marijuana rap sheets, which led to a lawsuit by veterans who were unfairly left out of the mix.

The state finally backed down the other day and will allow all those other folks to bid for weed licenses as well.

It was the grandest of unforced errors and was so avoidable.

The state could have easily checked all its virtue-signaling boxes by letting every one of those marginalized groups bid for licenses. Who can argue with giving disabled veterans a leg up? Or distressed farmers, a big constituency of upstate lawmakers?

In reality, if the state really wanted the weed market to take off, they just could have just relaxed regulations for everybody who wanted to get in the game and let the best businesses win.

That would have allowed more people in the pool, quickened the establishment of the marketplace and allowed the tax revenue to start pouring in. Even under that rubric, the state could have made allowances for and given incentives to whatever marginalized groups they chose.

But, no. The goal wasn’t only to quickly establish the weed market. It had to be done in the correct, ultra-lefty way. And it caused a mess as New York saw an explosion of illegal weed shops that the police can still barely keep up with. Weed dealers without storefronts are also doing a brisk business, if the reek of weed everywhere is any indication.

The cartels are very happy with how this is all going. It’s going to take a big effort to rid them from the marketplace.

Meanwhile, just a handful of legal dispensaries are open and tons of marijuana lays fallow in barns because there’s no place to legally sell it.

Good job, New York.

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