Lawmakers, businesses voice marijuana concern
Capital Region leaders urge more study before adult-use legalization
State lawmakers and Capital Region business leaders added to the chorus of voices seeking further debate before the legalization of recreational marijuana in New York on Thursday, expressing concerns over impairment testing and marijuana use among youths.
The panel of 15 lawmakers and local employers focused on the difficulty employers may have in dealing with on-thejob marijuana use should the drug be legalized, and pointed to what they say is a lack of research surrounding the issue.
“To jump in and say this is OK ... We don’t really know for sure what all of the different dangers are,” Dr. Carolyn Jones-assini of Ellis Medicine said. “One of the issues that we’re missing here is really a push to try to get more studies and to try to educate both our general population and our medical population of what the dangers are.”
Representatives from companies including General Electric, CAP COM, ARC and the Capital Region Chamber of Commerce,
said it may be problematic to test for impairment following an accident in the workplace. Because marijuana stays in someone’s system for days after use, it could be difficult to tell if marijuana played a part in the accident.
Assembly Member Patricia Fahy said her two biggest concerns regarding marijuana legalization are the increase in use among youth and the intensity of usage increasing.
She referenced a study by the National Academies of Sciences “pointing to some very, very troubling trends, especially with psychoses and schizophrenia,” she said.
“I think we are putting the cart a little bit before the horse in terms of impaired driving,” Fahy added. “We do not yet have a good mechanism for judging impaired driving.”
Jones-assini said advertising for marijuana could become akin to the near-ubiquitous tobacco advertising of the 1950s and 1960s, even though she says it’s unclear how unsafe marijuana may be.
“If the state moves forward and someday we have legalization of marijuana, we don’t want (it) to be a (large) advertiser, because that still is an important way to get it in people’s head that this is a cool thing to do,” Jones-assini said.
Fahy and fellow Assembly members John Mcdonald, Carrie Woerner and Mary Beth Walsh, said they support decriminalization of marijuana, if not immediate legalization. That could include the expunging or sealing of records of potential employees who have been convicted of marijuana-related charges.
“There’s a number of concerns I’ve had,” Fahy said. “That said, I very much want to see full decriminalization. I want to see us tackle the social justice issues because there have been so many historic wrongs on this.”
Frank Kerbein, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Business Council of New York State, said his group would support that, but also said employers will treat on-the-job marijuana use just as they would alcohol consumption in the workplace.
All four Assembly members supported the removal of marijuana legalization from the budget negotiation process to allow more time for debate and analysis — something Gov. Andrew Cuomo agreed to do earlier this week.
Cuomo said it could be worked out after the budget is passed, but before the legislative session ends June 19.
Mcdonald and Fahy said the establishment of a task force before marijuana is legalized may help solve some of the potential problems associated with legalization.
“There needs to be more dialog,” Mcdonald said, adding that things like training for Drug Recognition Enforcement officers has to be established — and funded — among many other smaller kinks legislators have to work through.
“I’d rather see an adult-use marijuana legalization task force established, have representatives from the legislature, all parties, to work with the executive to put this proper framework together so we can come back to vote on it in its entirety,” he said.
But how these concerns may be addressed and when the legislation will be crafted remains up in the air at this point.
“It’s Albany,” Mcdonald said, “anything can happen.”