The state of New York is weighing whether it should legalize marijuana — and a new report comes down hard in favor of the move, Bloomberg reports.
Governor Andrew Cuomo asked for the report in January 2018, and today the New York State Department of Health sent the “Regulated Marijuana Report” to the governor’s office. As part of the study, New York State agencies and experts examined the peer-reviewed literature about pot, public health, public safety — and, of course, the public pocketbook. They also investigated how other states that have legalized weed have fared. The results, released today, are a persuasive argument in favor of legalization: “It has become less a question of whether to legalize but how to do so responsibly,” the report says.
It’d certainly be a popular move, since “one in 10 New Yorkers used marijuana in the last month,” the report says. And it could mean gains for public health: for one thing, regulating weed sales could cut down on contaminants like “fungi spores, mold, bacteria, heavy metals, pesticides, and growth enhancers,” the report says.