On Wednesday, the mayor sat at the controls of a crane at the Long Island waste disposal plant, where he personally dumped loads of bagged illegal weed into the furnace.

"By burning the cannabis, it doesn't remain in our landfills. It doesn't remain on our streets," Adams said.

Speaking on the dangers of purchasing weed from unlicensed cannabis stores, Adams said, "They're laced. They're dangerous. You don't know what you're getting."

While the fight against illegal weed shops is far from over, with close to 4,000 illegal stores running in amongst the city's five boroughs, city officials confirmed they've been able to close 1,000 of them.

Adams believed it was important to burn the weed so that it didn't end up in landfills.

"You place it in the landfill, and you really just open up the door for people to go to the landfills and try to salvage whatever they can," he said.