Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said she does not see many communities expressing their support for the recreational use of marijuana, which Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Dec. 17 he would seek to legalize and tax this year. “I might be wrong,” Curran, a Democrat, said. “It would be interesting to see who might embrace this.”
“I think [recreational legalization] is going to bring on a whole host of problems, which I’m not sure that the governor or his agencies are prepared to deal with,” said Legislator Thomas McKevitt, an East Meadow Republican.
One of McKevitt’s main worries, he said, is that legalization would lead to a spike in the number of traffic accidents involving those driving while under the influence of marijuana. “There is no clear test or no clear standards to delineate what makes a person incapable of driving [while high],” he said.
Curran said that aside from North Hempstead, she had not heard much discussion about where dispensaries would be zoned. The North Hempstead board also capped the number of dispensaries allowed in its jurisdiction to two. King Sweeney said she has asked her staff to look into how the Hempstead Town Board might draw zoning boundaries for such sites.
Town Supervisor Laura Gillen, a Rockville Centre Democrat, said that keeping dispensaries as far away as possible from schools, day care centers and places of worship would be a paramount concern for her. “We don’t want to facilitate the introduction of marijuana to young children and schoolchildren,” she said.
Health issues
Officials from South Nassau Communities Hospital said in September that while marijuana is not a deadly drug, there are certain health concerns. Dr. Adhi Sharma, SNCH’s chief medical officer, said that there is a 1-in-10 chance that an adult will become addicted to marijuana.
But Sharma dismissed the notion that marijuana is a gateway drug, saying that in states where medical marijuana use has been legalized, there has been a 14 percent reduction in the prescription of opioids for pain relief, resulting in 3.9 million fewer opioid pills being taken per day. He also said that in the Netherlands, where recreational marijuana use has been legal for 40 years, there is no statistical evidence that adolescents who use it moved on to other drugs.
The American Psychological Association, however, has said that continued marijuana use has led to poor school performance and higher dropout rates among teenagers. Curran said she would like to see more research on marijuana’s impact on developing brains.
Outgoing State Sen. Kemp Hannon, a Garden City Republican and the chairman of the Senate’s Health Committee, is an avid supporter of medicinal marijuana, but has said he is skeptical about legalizing it for recreational use. One of his fears, Hannon said, is that it could harm the medical marijuana industry by allowing potential patients to self-medicate, as opposed to going to a doctor.
But Sen.-elect Kevin Thomas, a Levittown Democrat who unseated Hannon in November, has a different view. Thomas is a proponent of recreational legalization, which he says would curb the opioid epidemic by giving residents a much less harmful alternative to opioids.
Criminal justice
The NCPD’s arrests for marijuana possession have increased steadily in recent years (see box). Some officials, including Thomas, have called for prior arrests and convictions to be expunged from people’s records. Nassau County District Attorney Madeline Singas did not return a call requesting comment on whether she would take such action.
Curran said she would not support such a move. “I think you have to follow the law as it was written at the time,” she said. Kaminsky, a former federal prosecutor who has tried drug dealers, said that as far as he was concerned, it would depend on the crime. “Are we talking about major traffickers, or somebody who had a small amount in a park?” he said.
Kaminsky said he believed that a bill legalizing recreational marijuana would pass in April, when the state budget is approved, but added that he would like to see the implementation of the law delayed, perhaps until 2020.