Gov. Cuomo said he is abandoning a plan to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, while defending his latest proposal to have the drug accessible for medical use. The governor said Monday that he is ditching the plan for legalizing small amounts of weed because possession arrests due to stop-and-frisks are no longer a major factor. He has previously pushed legislation to decriminalize the drug because of the policy's effect on minority communities. The NYPD has dramatically reduced stop-and-frisk searches, and a federal judge has deemed some of the searches unconstitutional. [continues 142 words]
Holy smoke! Here's a little-known fact to give sick folks high hopes: New York already has a law on the books to dispense marijuana to cancer patients. The medical-marijuana law was approved by the state Legislature and thenGov. Hugh Carey in 1980 following an appeal from brain-cancer patient Antonio Olivieri, a former state Assembly member from Manhattan who lobbied legislators from the hospital. The law - called the Antonio G. Olivieri Controlled Substance Therapeutic Research Program - authorizes hospitals to administer pot to cancer and glaucoma patients for medicinal purposes following approval by medical review boards. [continues 105 words]
Pill-popping addicts could get dope through NYU Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital - just like heroin junkies receive methadone - to wean them off the prescription pain killers that have bedeviled celebrities such as Anna Nicole Smith and Rush Limbaugh, The Post has learned. The National Institute on Drug Abuse is launching its first large scale Prescription Opiate Addiction Treatment Study at 12 sites across the country, including the NYU/Bellevue primary-care clinic. The drug trials will test the effectiveness of buprenorphone/naloxone tablets - marketed as Suboxone - to break patients' addictions to painkillers such as Vicodin and OxyContin. The tablets will be accompanied by different levels of drug-abuse counseling, a key aspect of the study. [continues 86 words]
The bouncers at the Sound Factory dance club were ordered to stop throwing drug dealers out of the club because it was hurting business, a former security guard claimed yesterday. "We were instructed to slow down because we were pushing out too many people," said William Douglas. "I was told we can't throw all the patrons out of the party because there would not be a party." Douglas testified at the federal trial against Sound Factory owner Richard Grant and security aide Randell Rogiers. The defendants are charged with five counts of turning the cavernous Hell's Kitchen club into a drug den. [continues 203 words]
Exclusive The Bloomberg administration is eliminating a long-standing city policy of putting drug-addicted teenagers from better-off families on welfare to pay for their long-term residential treatment, The Post has learned. The city Human Resources Administration has acknowledged that the unusual practice of putting 2,000 adolescents a year on the dole for treatment - without considering their families' income - violates existing welfare laws that limit such public assistance to the needy. Under the decades-long practice, drug-treatment centers admitted the teens into the program and even submitted on their behalf the paperwork to qualify them for public assistance. [continues 328 words]
