Author: Stephen Johnson / Source: Big Think
- Governor Andrew Cuomo said he’d pursue the legislation in 2019.
- New York would become the 11th state to legalize recreational marijuana.
- The legalization of marijuana in a prominent state like New York would likely represent a landmark shift in how the country views marijuana regulation.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday that he plans to push for the statewide legalization of recreational marijuana in early 2019.
The Democrat governor, who was in Manhattan giving an address that outlined an agenda for his first 100 days in office for his upcoming third term, said “we have had two criminal justice systems: one for the wealthy and the well off, and one for everyone else,” adding that some policies disproportionately affected African-American and minority communities.
“And that’s going to end,” he said in Manhattan. “We must end the needless and unjust convictions and the debilitating criminal stigma and let’s legalize the adult use of recreational use of marijuana once and for all.”
Cuomo, who as recently as 2017 called marijuana a “gateway drug,” had ordered the state health department to conduct a study forecasting the impacts that legalization would bring to New York. The results, published over the summer, found that the benefits of legalizing pot for adults “would outweigh the potential negative impacts,” and predicted that legalization would yield, at the very least, about $250 million in annual tax…
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