Report: New York State Will Legalize Marijuana
On Thursday, March 25, New York State lawmakers confirmed a deal to legalize cannabis in the Empire State.
According to the New York Times, the deal “would allow delivery of the drug and permit club-like lounges or ‘consumption sites’ where marijuana, but not alcohol, could be consumed… It would also allow a person to cultivate up to six marijuana plants at home, indoors or outdoors, for personal use.”
Experts estimate that the removal of cannabis prohibition will welcome a $4.2 billion industry and major job-maker into New York, as seen in weed-legal states like California, Colorado, Washington, Oregon and more. However, due to the complex nature of the deal “the first sales of legal marijuana are likely more than a year away.”
Lawmakers will also set out to right the wrongs of mass-incarceration and the war on drugs.
“A percentage of revenue that is raised will get invested into the communities where the people who suffered mass incarceration come from and still live in many cases,” Assemblywoman Crystal D. Peoples-Stokes told The Times. “For me this is a lot more than about raising revenue: It’s about investing in the lives of the people that have been damaged.”
