ALBANY -- A Cuomo administration panel will recommend New York State legalize recreational use of marijuana, the state's health commissioner said Monday. But the long-awaited report by the group has still not been released as the State Legislature looks to end its 2018 session on Wednesday -- leaving action for this year on the matter all but impossible. Dr. Howard Zucker, the state's top health regulator, said public health, law enforcement and others inside and outside government, have been examining the issue of marijuana legalization since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo asked for a study on the issue in January. [continues 969 words]
Now the state is taking steps to increase the crop. "We want to be the nation's leader in hemp production,'' Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday shortly before signing legislation intended to boost the commercialization of industrial hemp, which is used in some 25,000 products from cosmetics and animal feed to clothing and biofuels. The state is also pumping $10 million into research for the now-fledgling industry, State Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball said, after the federal government in 2014 relaxed rules governing the growing of the crop. Industrial hemp, unlike its marijuana cousin, contains no or minimal levels of tetrahydrocannabinol, the ingredient that gets users high. [continues 325 words]
Kids With Seizures to Receive Oil-Based Form of the Drug ALBANY The Cuomo administration has signed a deal with a British pharmaceutical company to conduct a medical marijuana clinical trial in New York State involving children who suffer from rare forms of epilepsy. The letter of intent between the state and GW Pharmaceuticals, signed May 31 and obtained Monday by The Buffalo News, envisions the drug being made available in an oil-or spray-based form to eligible children across the state who do not respond to traditional drug therapies and can suffer from hundreds of seizures in a day. [continues 911 words]
Push for Legalization Makes Key Progress ALBANY Legalizing the use of medical marijuana passed a crucial hurdle Tuesday when the Senate Health Committee approved a bill allowing its use by patients with certain health conditions and under tightly regulated growing conditions. The vote is the furthest that the measure has ever gotten in the Senate, where it has died year after year following passage in the Assembly. But this year, it gained momentum with a push by a growing coalition of patient and medical groups, and had the political advantage of being sponsored by Sen. Diane J. Savino, a hard-driving lawmaker from Staten Island who is part of a small coalition of independent Democrats who rule the Senate with Republicans. [continues 1012 words]
Parents Must Leave State to Help Stricken Children ALBANY - Wendy S. Conte, of Orchard Park, returned from Colorado a few weeks ago after renting an apartment there, getting a Colorado driver's license and setting up residency. "Officially, I'm a Colorado resident," she said. The reason for Conte's new residency has nothing to do with frequently heard reasons for the New York exodus - evaporating job opportunities, high taxes or weather. She took up the new residency so that her 8-year-old daughter, Anna, who suffers from lifelong debilitating seizures, can get access to that state's medical marijuana program. [continues 1760 words]
Local Greenhouse Hopes Bumper Crop of Medical Marijuana Is at End of Albany Maze ALBANY With 5 million pounds of tomatoes grown last year by a sprawling 12-acre greenhouse operation in Niagara County, Gary Smith and his partners can arguably be called the tomato kings of Western New York. If Smith has his way, though, marijuana plants could be his next bumper crop. Smith's company, H2Gro Greenhouses in Lewiston, is believed to be one of the first in the state with an actual site in mind to grow marijuana plants in the event New York, as appears now likely, will start letting patients with certain medical conditions use the drug for relief from an assortment of ailments. [continues 1149 words]
Medical Marijuana Isn't Part of Decriminalization ALBANY - One of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's top "progressive" priorities for this legislative session is the decriminalization of 25 grams or less of marijuana the equivalent of about 0.9 ounce, or 40 to 50 joints so that young people, especially minorities, don't get criminal records that haunt them for years to come. "We want to decriminalize low levels of marijuana so we're not going to have those arrests for stop-and-frisk anymore," Cuomo told a gathering of black and Hispanic state lawmakers last weekend in Albany. [continues 1124 words]
ALBANY -- Long-stalled efforts to permit the medicinal use of marijuana in this state appear to have a good chance of passage before lawmakers end their session in June. It would make New York the 15th state to legalize the drug for medical reasons. Advocates say they believe the Democratic-controlled Senate and Assembly have the votes to pass legislation permitting qualified patients to grow their own marijuana plants, or obtain the drug on the streets or through a state-sanctioned dispensary.Gov. David A. Paterson also is said to be supportive of the legalization. [continues 1062 words]
Incarceration Ratedeclines for 8th Year ALBANY -- As other states see an increase in prison inmate populations, New York State has been bucking that trend for the past eight years thanks to falling crime rates and new laws that have kept an increasing number of nonviolent offenders out of jail. "It is a success. When you look at the other major states, and states all over the country, we haven't gone in a direction that they have," said Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, a Queens Democrat and chairman of the Assembly's corrections committee. [continues 878 words]
It Could Become the 13th State to Legalize Medical Marijuana, a Move Some Say Could Mean Relief ALBANY -- Joel Peacock, a registered member of the Conservative Party, has little use for liberal politicians. "I'm as far from liberal as you're ever going to get," the 57- year-old Buffalo construction inspector said. Yet Peacock said he hopes state lawmakers in Albany this week will pass a bill legalizing marijuana for certain medical uses. Peacock, who said "never in a million years" did he think he would ever promote such a plan, has been in severe pain since a 2001 car accident on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo. In the years since, it has affected nearly every facet of his life. [continues 887 words]
Governor Changes Position After Earlier Opposition ALBANY -- Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer, in a reversal of a campaign position, said Tuesday he could support legislation legalizing the use of marijuana for certain medicinal purposes. The governor's position comes as lawmakers stepped up a push in the final two weeks of the 2007 session for New York to join 12 other states and allow marijuana for those suffering from cancer, multiple sclerosis and other painful conditions. In a debate last summer, Spitzer said he opposed medical marijuana. Now he said he is "open" to the idea after being swayed by advocates in the past couple of months. [continues 925 words]
ALBANY - The battle over the state's tough, Rockefeller-era drug laws turned nasty Monday, with reform advocates claiming that race has played an issue in who is granted clemency each December by the Pataki administration. With efforts to reform the laws still at an impasse, advocates have turned their immediate lobbying effort to persuading Gov. George E. Pataki to grant clemency to a few dozen inmates sentenced to long prison terms for nonviolent, drug possession charges under the 1970s provisions. New York governors traditionally grant clemency at the end of December. [continues 483 words]
