New York State Senator Diane Savino says she knows the moment Governor Andrew Cuomo changed his mind on legal weed.
Cuomo was famously so anti-marijuana that as recently as February 2017 he was still pushing the “gateway drug” line. However, at the beginning of August he announced a 20-person working group that will look into the practicalities of legalizing the drug for recreational adult use in the state, a decision that followed a recommendation from a commission that recreational marijuana be legalized.
On Thursday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced that his office has established a working group to draft legislation for adult-use cannabis legalization. The development comes about a month after the state Health Department released a report determining that the pros of legalization outweigh the cons.
Few things compel New Yorkers to cross the Hudson River into the Garden State. They might come to visit the Jersey Shore or catch a Giants game.
Marijuana advocates think New Yorkers would also come for weed, filling PATH trains and tunnels to legally buy marijuana. But that's only if New Jersey beats its neighbor to market.
The argument that marijuana legalization will help poor black and Latino people has been made vociferously in New York and New Jersey, where national groups that back legalization, such as the Drug Policy Alliance, have teamed up with clergy and civil rights groups.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo took a step closer to voicing full-throated support for legal marijuana on Friday, embracing elements of a state Health Department report that favored legalization.
Mr. Cuomo, addressing reporters after an unrelated speech in Brooklyn, said New York would no longer have the option of trying to simply prevent the flow of the drug into the state now that its neighbors in Massachusetts and New Jersey are moving forward with plans to legalize the drug.
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.
In a move announced this afternoon, New York State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker filed emergency regulations adding any condition for which an opioid could be prescribed as a qualifying condition for medical marijuana.
The new rule opens up medical cannabis as an option for thousands of patients dealing with pain, who might otherwise need to take opioid medications. Plans for the new rule were announced last month, but today’s news means the condition qualifies for medical marijuana immediately.
For a long time New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has been passionately anti-pot, even calling marijuana a "gateway drug" last year. But a study he commissioned in January has reached another conclusion and will recommend that the state legalize recreational weed.
New York moved a significant step closer to legalizing recreational marijuana, as a study commissioned by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will recommend that the state allow adults to consume marijuana legally, the governor’s health commissioner said on Monday.
The announcement by the commissioner, Howard Zucker, signals a broad turnaround for the administration of Mr. Cuomo, a second-term Democrat who said as recently as last year that marijuana was a “gateway drug.”
Among the big, blue states, New York has been wildly backward on marijuana law. That may finally be changing. Governor Andrew Cuomo – who as recently as last year touted the prohibitionist myth that marijuana is a "gateway drug" – is about to receive a report from the state's health commissioner recommending a framework for legal, regulated marijuana in New York.