The debate over legalizing marijuana for adult, recreational use in New York has been brewing for the last two years after Democrats took control of the state Legislature, but disagreements on the issue coupled with a global pandemic have kept it out of reach for lawmakers.
That could change next year as the Legislature returns to Albany, but Democrats still remain divided on certain aspects of the issue that are likely to complicate negotiations.
Chief among them is what the state will do with the tax revenue from the marijuana industry, which is expected to generate around $300 million annually when the program is stabilized, according to projections from the state.
Democrats leading negotiations on the issue in the Legislature have backed a bill, called the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, that would earmark half that revenue to be invested in communities where the state’s drug laws have been enforced at higher rates.
The legislation is sponsored by two of the most influential Democrats in the state Legislature: Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Erie, and State Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.
“The people that I’ve been working with, and are committed to this model, feel very strongly that revenue should be used for social justice purposes, to support undoing damage done in poor communities of color by our unsuccessful drug wars,” Krueger said.
State data has shown that people of color are historically arrested more often for possession of marijuana than white people in New York City, for example. The same has been true in cities like Albany, according to the Times Union.
That’s why lawmakers like Krueger want to use a significant part of the revenue from the marijuana industry to aid communities most impacted by the state’s drug laws.
Under the proposal, the state would create a special fund that would be used to award grants for community-based nonprofit organizations and local government entities that work to support the needs of those communities, from job placement to legal services.
Democrats in New York broadly agree with that idea. But they disagree on how to get there.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo came out with a competing proposal to legalize marijuana last year, called the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act, that shares the same principle as the MRTA, but wouldn’t earmark specific funds for communities impacted by prohibition.
Instead, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act, or CRTA, would allow the state to distribute grants to community-based organizations, but wouldn’t mandate any amount of funding from marijuana production and sales for that purpose.
The difference has been a significant sticking point in negotiations over the legalization of marijuana in recent years, but it’s far from the only one.
Legalization wasn’t on the table in New York until last year, when Democrats took control of the state Senate for the first time in a decade. The Assembly had already been in Democratic hands for decades.
Still, after months of negotiations, Democrats couldn’t muster enough votes to strike a deal on legalization and the COVID-19 pandemic derailed the debate this year.
Instead, Democrats agreed to decriminalize small amounts of the drug: it’s no longer a criminal offense to possess less than two ounces of marijuana in…
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