Measure legalizing cannabis approved
Cuomo has said he will sign off on plan; Sales should start in about 18 months
The state Senate and Assembly Tuesday night gave their endorsements to a bill to legalize recreational use of marijuana for adults, with wide margins in each chamber that hewed closely, but not precisely, to party lines.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has said he will sign the bill, at which point possession of marijuana under three ounces will immediately become fully legalized in New York for adults over the age of 21. Retail sales should start in about 18 months, political leaders have estimated, after the government system is set up to oversee the budding industry.
The bill’s passage follows years of effort
from activists and elected lawmakers to rally support and forge a deal with enough votes to pass both chambers. Cuomo opposed legalization as recently as 2017, saying he felt marijuana is a “gateway drug,” but he has pushed legalization each of the last three sessions, since the Democrats took back the Senate. Legalization efforts each of those years have been stymied each year by disagreements over how the revenue would be split.
The bill was brought to the floor in each chamber Tuesday afternoon. It passed the Senate just after 7 p.m, with three Democrats joined the Republicans to vote ‘no,’ 40 to 23. The Assembly later voted 100-49 to pass the bill. Six Democrats joined the 43 Republicans in opposition.
During debate, Republicans quizzed the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Liz Krueger and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoplesstokes, for hours, asking critical questions about provisions for people convicted of crimes could get licenses to sell marijuana it the future, about liability for serving marijuana to people below 21, about police enforcement of impaired driving laws and other topics.
“I’m not going out and telling everyone to use marijuana, just the opposite,” Krueger said near the end of debate, adding that New Yorkers should think hard before using marijuana and should seek out information to make that choice. “But we are wasting lives, we are wasting generations of lives, we are wasting law enforcement budgets, we are wasting court budgets .. ... Let them go out and deal with real criminals and real crime.”
The historic legislation is expected to raise $350 million annually in revenue. For those who apply for licenses, priority will be given to women and people of color. Records will be expunged for marijuana-related offenses, and money will be reinvested in communities that have been most harmed by the decadeslong war on drugs.
Under the legislation, marijuana would be subject to a total sales tax of 13 percent, combining a state tax of 9 percent and local tax of 4 percent. Of the 9 percent state sales tax, 40 percent would go to education, 20 percent would go to anti-addiction efforts and 40 percent would go to communities of color most harmed by the the war on drugs.
Sen. Jabari Brisport, a Brooklyn Democrat, said that when he was 19, he was walking in lower Manhattan with a friend when that friend was grabbed by a plainclothes police officer. The officer said that Brisport’s friend matched the description of a drug dealer in the area. Brisport demanded that the officer show a badge or read his friend his rights, and Brisport said the officer pulled out his gun and pointed it at him.
“How many would-be future state senators have been casualties of the war on drugs?” Brisport said. “How many teachers? How many doctors?”
Krueger earlier in the debate said her own experience with marijuana was at age 19 at a production of the “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
“Nobody tried to put a gun to my head, and nobody tried to put me in jail because I was this nice white girl,” she said.
Cities, towns and villages can opt out of allowing marijuana retailers in their communities. To create an incentive to allow it, the proposal would direct 75 percent of the local sales taxes to the municipalities that host the stores, while just 25 percent would go to counties. County leaders — including Albany County Executive Dan Mccoy on Tuesday — have said they feel this is unfair as counties will bear the brunt of the costs of marijuana legalization, such as public health services or policing of impaired drivers.
In the medical marijuana program authorized in 2014, counties were able to opt-out. Several large ones did — including Suffolk and Nassau on Long Island — which motivated legislators this time around to not allow counties to opt-out of retail marijuana, according to a source familiar with discussions. Instead, under the current bill, it would now be up to cities to opt-out.
Republicans and the Democrats who joined them opposed the measure over concerns that legalization would lead to increased traffic deaths, could exacerbate addiction problems, could expose children or unwilling people to second-hand smoke and could serve as a gateway into harder drugs, among other reasons.
“I firmly believe that we are setting up communities to fail. We talk all the time about unintended negative consequences about the misguided policies that come out of this great chamber,” said Sen. Frederick Akshar, a Republican from Endwell and former law enforcement officer. “We all know what the negative consequences of this legislation will be, but some choose to simply ignore it.”
The issue critics of the legislation seemed most fixated on was the challenges of policing impaired driving. Sen. Anna Kaplan, the lone Democrat who spoke on the floor against the bill, said that was the issue she was concerned about. No effective tests exist to test whether someone is stoned in the moment, and the GOP emphasized repeatedly that just 343 of 55,000 police officers across the state are trained as drug recognition experts.
“We are about to take a huge step backwards,” Sen. George Borrello, a Silver Creek Republican, said, noting that the state has tried for 30 years to decrease impaired driving. “This bill, as it stands, is going to cost the lives of hundreds if not thousands of New Yorkers.”
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I’m not going out and telling everyone to use marijuana, just the opposite. But we are wasting lives, we are wasting generations of lives, we are wasting law enforcement budgets, we are wasting court budgets . ... Let them go out and deal with real criminals and real crime.”
State Sen.liz Krueger