Ithaca Mayor Svante Myrick has called on New York lawmakers to allow medical marijuana and consider legalizing marijuana in general, the Ithaca Journal reports.
“Every ye
ar, millions of dollars are spent on law enforcement and thousands of young people — disproportionately young people of color — have their futures destroyed for possession of small amounts of cannabis,” the first-term Democrat wrote in an opinion article published Wednesday in the Times Union of Albany.
“Because of that, I believe that New York should seriously consider legalizing marijuana; taxing it, and regulating it. That’s also why I have directed the Ithaca Police Department to focus on other issues that will more effectively protect the public. Between dealers of hard drugs and stopping violent crime, our officers have more important things to be focusing on than low-level marijuana offenses.”
Myrick, 25, told the Ithaca Journal that it’s something he believed for a while, but he wanted to get the piece out so the Legislature spots it as it reconvenes in January. The advocacy group Marijuna Majority also featured Myrick’s views on its website Wednesday, the paper said.
Although it has passed the state Assembly repeatedly, the legalization of medical marijuana has not passed the Republican-led Senate and Gov. Andrew Cuomo has opposed it.
Cuomo was asked yesterday about it, and he said while his office is reviewing it, his position hasn’t changed.
1 Comment
This is getting ridiculous, Marijuana should be legal and taxed and no body understands that. I am not going to state weather I smoke Marijuana or not but it needs to be legal for patients who have Tourette’s, ADHD, ADD, Cancer patients and many more. Does anybody know how Marijuana became illegal? How the test was conducted? They made monkeys get high for i thing thirty day straight, but the way it was conducted is that they put masks on the monkeys and pumped pure Marijuana smoke into the mask and they suffocated from it and it became illegal (the story in a wrap). So many people could benefit from it, and nobody thinks about that it may stop people from smoking cigarettes, if you have “weed” why not smoke that instead of “cigs”. It gets to a point where you have to ask your self, “am i really free in the U.S.A?”