Don’t toke med pot for granted
ALBANY — As New York inches closer to potentially legalizing recreational pot, a Staten Island state senator wants to make sure the effort doesn’t harm New York’s existing medical marijuana program.
“I have an interest in making sure whatever we do in New York doesn’t disrupt the medical marijuana program, which has happened in other states,” said Sen. Diane Savino, the Staten Island Democrat who sponsored the state’s medical marijuana law.
Savino is traveling this week to Nevada to meet with various officials on the subject.
Some states, including Oregon and Washington, that legalized recreational pot for adult usage saw their existing medical marijuana programs devastated, with a dramatic drop in product and dispensaries — to the detriment of patients who need it.
Savino said recreational and medical pot are not the same product.
Medical marijuana, which by federal law cannot be covered by insurance, is more expensive because of testing, development and processing, she said. It is typically tailored to address a patient’s specific set of symptoms.
The adult use recreational market can grow “tons of marijuana” and put it on the market cheaper than the medical programs, she said.
But that doesn’t make it the best product for those who are using it for medicinal purposes, Savino said.
“It’s not as simple as growing a plant and just using it,” Savino said. “You can undermine the medical program. A pharmaceutical-grade marijuana is a different kettle of fish. It’s grown and processed and created to deal with specific conditions. Every plant doesn’t work the same way.”
New York’s medial program, created in 2014, only covers a limited number of illnesses and does not allow patients to smoke the drug. They must ingest it by vaping or using oil, pills or edibles.
“If you’re using it for relaxation and getting a little bit high like you do with taking a drink . . . that’s not medical marijuana,” Savino said. “It’s not the same as just smoking a joint.”
Savino said Nevada, with both a medical marijuana program and legalized recreational weed, has seemingly balanced the two programs the right way.
While in Nevada this week, the state senator plans to meet with regulators and legislators who wrote the referendum on adult recreational use to see how they implemented it while at the same time not hurting the medical program.
She also will drop by a luncheon focused on diversity within the industry, “which is an issue we’re going to try and address in our program,” she said.
Savino said she expects Gov. Cuomo might seek to address the issue in the 2019-20 budget due to be enacted by the end of March.
“It’s probably going to be his bill, but it should be informed by what’s going on in the industry and what you can do and what will work and what doesn’t work,” she said, adding the medical program should probably be expanded.
Cuomo, who last year called pot a “gateway drug,” this year commissioned a study led by the state Health Department that found the benefits of legalizing recreational pot in New York would outweigh the negatives. He has since commissioned a panel to develop recommendations on potential legislation that could be acted on as soon as the coming legislative session.