A little more than a week ago — and to a degree of fanfare that would've been unimaginably piddling if it were as little as five years ago — New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law making limited forms of medicinal marijuana legal in the Empire State.
And yet while such a move looks a bit pedestrian now that Colorado and Washington are well into their experiment with legal marijuana, it would be a mistake to assume the bill's passage in New York is inconsequential. When it comes to major political and cultural change like ending prohibition, the hardest step is often the first.
Hoping to get an inside view into the bill's passage, its likely effects, and why Gov. Cuomo resisted signing it for as long as he did, Salon called up Evan Nison, co-founder and director of NY Cannabis Alliance and director for the East Coast Cannabis Division of Terra Tech. Our conversation is below and has been edited for clarity and length.
To start simply, can you tell me a little bit about the law that Gov. Cuomo signed into effect recently?
Sure, Governor Cuomo signed into law one of the more restrictive medical marijuana laws in the country, but it is very medical-based. It had a lot of input from both the Department of Health — and even law enforcement on the tail end of the negotiation process.
What does it allow?
There's going to be a limited number of growers — that's what they’re called — and registered organizations. So it’ll be five registered organizations that are each allowed to have four dispensaries each, unless the department of health says that there could be more. We’re gonna start off with a maximum of 20 dispensaries. Marijuana will be available in every other form except to smoke it, so you’ll see marijuana for vaporizers, tinctures, oils, concentrates, those sorts of things will be available for patients.
As limited as the bill is, do you still consider it a win?
I consider the law a win, absolutely. This is gonna help hundreds if not thousands of patients in New York. Also, this is a step forward. New York is now the 23rd medical marijuana state. The movement within New York, the marijuana law reform movement within New York, can now all focus together on both implementing this law and broader legalization and regulation for adults over 21. So this gets us out of this sort of holding pattern that we’ve been in in New York.
In terms of the negotiation and lobbying process, who in Albany did you work with, primarily — was it the Senate or the governor's office or both?
Almost the entire time — the five-plus years I was working on the bill — was focused on the Senate. That’s because, for the majority of the time, it was run by the Republicans and then eventually the "independent" Democrats. The assembly was great throughout the whole process and passed the bill multiple times just this past year. The governor’s office was fairly silent on it, maybe even more of a hazard than anything throughout most of the process until the very tail end. Something else that was interesting to note was that we had the votes in the Senate for maybe a year and a half or two years before the vote was brought to the floor. And we had the votes in the Senate to pass the broader version before Cuomo amended it. It was really just a matter of the Senate leadership not bringing the vote to the floor, but the support was there in the legislature to pass this years ago.
Was Cuomo the reason it languished for so long?
I think it was Senator Skelos and Senator Hannon — the chair of the Health Committee and the Republican majority leader. I don’t think Cuomo helped the process. A lot of the times, the Senate leadership pointed at Cuomo, and Cuomo pointed at the Senate leadership; the sort of cyclical finger-pointing that goes on sometimes in Albany. I think Cuomo probably could have passed this with an email or two in the past year and a half, and I think that goes to show what all the advocates, the great job that the advocates and the patients, and even the media has done. Because I think it’s really them that have forced Cuomo’s hand to get him to act.
Do you think Cuomo would've rather not touched this at all, considering he wants to win reelection by as big a margin as possible and still seems to think it's dangerous for a Democrat, even though the culture's view of marijuana is changing so rapidly?
Yeah, I don’t think he ever wanted to touch this issue. But I think what happened is towards the tail end he saw the cultural winds shifting. He saw that our lowest poll was in the mid to high 80s. I’m sure he did his own polling and realized that out of all the things progressives and liberals are pushing him on, this was the most feasible. And I pointed this out before, but I don’t think it’s coincidence that the governor leaked his plan to the New York Times on a Saturday afternoon — you know, the plan that he originally had in the State of the State. But with that being said, once he did decide to move, and he was swayed by the patients, he did move, he did get it done. He forged some of the incredibly business-unfriendly amendments. But at the end of the day, he got a bill on and he signed it.
That's kind of his M.O., isn't it? He'll resist doing something that isn't a total slam-dunk as long as he can, but once he commits, he gets it done.
From the very beginning, a lot of us advocates joked that a victory would mean Governor Cuomo having a signing ceremony and we probably wouldn’t even be invited or know where it is. We knew that this is what victory would like.
Do you feel that the victory might have a kind of catalytic influence on the rest of the country, maybe the same that, at least according to the conventional narrative, the passage of marriage equality in New York really was the moment the dam broke for the issue, nationally? Or is New York following — and not leading — on this issue?
Unfortunately, on this one, New York is following rather than leading, at this point in time. I think that New York could be a leader in marijuana industry regulation, in terms of overall legalizing and taxing marijuana. I think we have potential to be a leader, especially with the new possible deal in the horizon where the independent Democrats and the Democrats will take control over the Senate, instead of the Republicans. New York was a leader in repealing alcohol prohibition and I think, hopefully, we can do that again. But ... we’re the 23rd state [to do this] and although we’re a landmark state, we’ve certainly haven’t been a leader on this issue yet.
That's funny that you mention Prohibition. Did you guys make any Al Smith jokes while you were working on this?
I have, yeah. I mean, the day that Amendment 64 in Colorado and the Washington bill passed a couple years ago, I actually pulled up a newspaper from the day that Smith signed the bill repealing alcohol prohibition in New York. And you know, it was very similar to what’s going on in New York now, especially with racial policing and corruption in the police force because of the prohibition. So hopefully the Democrats take control of the Senate and then independent Democrats will make New York a leader again on this.
Do you think in, say, five years New York will be at the same place in terms of legal marijuana that Colorado and Washington are at now?
Five years from now, I do. I think a lot of states will be like Washington or Colorado. On the East Coast, we’ll probably have Massachusetts, Maine, Rhode Island, maybe Vermont, maybe New York; depending on when Chris Christie decides to resign and run for president, maybe New Jersey. Yeah, I do.
How much do you think the fact that capital is starting to get behind medicinal and recreational marijuana has to do with its success in recent years?
A lot. I think the face of cannabis is changing for the average person. I don’t think it’s actually changing but I think in society’s mind it's changing ... It’s becoming increasingly legitimate and people are willing to come out of the shadows and you’re seeing industries — you know, these very sophisticated products that are better for your health than the black market ... It’s changing everything. It’s changing the product, it’s changing the face of it, it’s changing the poll numbers, the support. And people are also starting to recognize it as a legitimate alternative — and a safer alternative — to alcohol.
Last question: I don't know if you saw this a few days ago, but President Obama was offered a toke when he visited a bar in Denver. He laughed and turned it down, but do you think one day we'll see a president say yes to that offer in a similar situation?
I do! I think based on that video — and Obama may have actually wanted to, based on the smile on his face —
Ha, yeah, he didn’t look too upset!
No, he didn’t. The other day, you saw the city attorney of Seattle buy cannabis legally in their stores and tell the news reporters he’s going to consume some of it and save some of it. So I think as society continues to evolve to accept this as a legitimate and safer alternative, I think it is possible, and I think it’s likely, that a president would say yes.
Who knows, maybe in 30 years instead of Hillary Clinton knocking back beers in some rural Pennsylvania bar we'll see candidate Chelsea Clinton taking a hit at a coffee shop or something.
Haha, right. I mean, they were drinking all day. Obama was drinking with Gov. Hickenlooper in Denver...
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