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.
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.”
The North American Marijuana Index rose on Monday as pot stocks gained despite further delays to Canada’s marijuana legalization efforts. Though minor, 34 amendments were proposed to the final bill, which is expected to pass the Senate on Thursday. Following that, the bill will head back to the lower chamber, where members of the House will consider the changes.
New York might be getting a step closer to legalizing marijuana.
The state health department has completed its much-anticipated study into the legalization of the drug, but as of the time of this writing it has not been released.
Sources said Tuesday that the study — which Gov. Andrew Cuomo commissioned earlier this year — highlights the benefits of legalization on criminal justice reforms and a tax on the drug, but it stops short of fully endorsing the legalization.
The momentum for both initiatives is building. With neighboring Massachusetts legalizing pot and New Jersey moving to do the same, New York's rationale for following suit is getting stronger. Some 63% of voters supported the idea in a recent poll. The need to move sooner rather than later was obvious when a New York Times investigation this month showed marijuana arrests were almost exclusively of African-Americans and Hispanics, even though whites use pot just as often.
Back in 2016, market research experts predicted that the legal cannabis industry would earn over $21 billion by 2020. Looking back on that prediction after all of the lucrative advancements made by legal marijuana businesses and entrepreneurs since then, that figure seems fairly conservative at this point. CNBC recently highlighted that sentiment in a story about the predictions made by the New York City comptroller. The comptroller, Scott Stringer, said that legal cannabis in the empire state could be over a $3 billion dollar market, right from the start.
The 2018 NYC Cannabis Parade & Rally unfolds in New York City Saturday, according to Metro New York, the same day as the Cinco de Mayo holiday.
Cynthia Nixon was high on legalizing weed but didn’t inhale as her fellow demonstrators openly toked during an annual pot parade in Manhattan Saturday.
“Arresting people for cannabis — particularly people of color — is the crown jewel for the racist war on drugs and we must pluck it down,” Nixon said at the NYC Cannabis Parade and Rally across from the Union Square Whole Foods.
If New Jersey legalized pot, it would be impossible to stop people from bringing buds back to New York, unless the state restricted sales to residents only or police searched every single person coming through the Port Authority Bus Terminal, Penn Station, the PATH trains, and the six bridges and tunnels that connect it to Manhattan and Staten Island.