New York Cannabis Legalization

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NYS legislators expect the new cannabis industry to bring $300 million per year in tax revenue when fully rolled out. Which is great news for NY, right? Except that Senator Krueger who has been helping lead the way in cannabis reform has recently (March 12th) revised her bill S1527C to keep similar penalties for marijuana that are in place today. She can be seen speaking at a CannaGather event stating the NYS government spends upwards of $500 million on marijuana enforcement each year! This is a combination of monies spent on policing, prosecutions, and dept of corrections. How is it possible that we are willing to legalize but still spend more on enforcement costs than tax revenue brought in by this new industry, where is the social justice in that? Anyone following the politics of this process of bringing legalized cannabis to NYS has heard all these lawmakers claim "It's about doing things right" for years now but yet they are willing to submit to the status quo. Whether you are a marijuana user or not does this make sense for our state? I personally don't see how.

If NY goes ahead with this legalization plan it will ruin all of the good it can make. I don't know what the fix/answer is here as these lawmakers know our opinion on marijuana, polls show over 60% support marijuana legalization. This is a very complicated topic and an uncomfortable one for some but I think the people have spoken in both the polls and the simple fact that we won't let anyone tell us we can't use marijuana even after decades of war against us. You can keep locking the people/voters/tax payers away but we never let go of our herb, it only becomes more ingrained in our society.

I come loaded with facts –

Cost to house inmates in our county jails- County by county (My home county of Suffolk the cost comes in just under $140,000 per yr!)

https://jlusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/FREEnewyork-ByTheNumbers_final.pdf

Governor Cuomo's Bill – Cannabis Regulation & Taxation Act (CRTA 2.0)

https://www.budget.ny.gov/pubs/archive/fy21/exec/artvii/revenue-bill.pdf

Senator Krueger's Bill – S1527C Marijuana Regulation & Taxation Act (MRTA)

https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2019/s1527

Senator Krueger can be seen speaking about the cost of Cannabis enforcement costs at 1:21:30 of the video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VslZUoRFEmo