Cuomo: N.Y. will legalize marijuana in 2020
ALBANY, N.Y. >> Facing a multibillion-dollar budget gap and a restive, emboldened left-wing of his party, Gov. Andrew Cuomo laid out his 2020 agenda Wednesday, promising to legalize marijuana, boost environmental spending and build on a raft of legislative wins in a Democratic-dominated capital.
Considering the state’s economic straits, Cuomo leaned heavily on proposals that would need little or no state funding, like banning gun ownership for people who have committed certain misdemeanor crimes in other states, banning foam food containers and outlawing synthetic opioids similar to fentanyl.
In proposals released before his speech in Albany on Wednesday, Cuomo, a thirdterm Democrat, mostly sidestepped the state’s daunting $6 billion budget gap.
At the same time, Cuomo retained his penchant for higher-priced infrastructure projects, proposing to invest $300 million to repurpose the Erie Canal to attract tourists, $9 million to build a drone facility upstate and an unspecified sum on an ambitious plan to revamp Penn Station to accommodate an additional 175,000 riders by building eight new tracks.
The governor outlined his plans in his annual State of the State address, which kicks off the start of the year’s legislative session and comes on the heels of a historic year in Albany, where lawmakers passed major new laws on rent, climate change and congestion pricing, among other issues.
One major issue that fell short last year was marijuana legalization. It was a failure that Cuomo promised to remedy in 2020, a move that could pour much-needed revenue into state coffers.
At the same time, the governor also suggested that the state university system be enlisted to do research on the drug and its effects, saying that “the cannabinoid industry has gone unregulated and unchecked,” likening the drug’s potential peril to that of opioids.
“The federal government failed Americans with opioids,” Cuomo said in a briefing book released with the governor’s speech. “And we cannot allow that to happen with cannabinoids.”