The legalization of adult-use marijuana in New York State leaves us scratching our heads.

Since the beginning, law enforcement has been relegated to the backseat of the conversation. We accepted long ago that our role in dealing with predicted street impact would be challenging.

We didn’t think we’d have to do it empty-handed.

In their rush to push through the Marihuana Regulation and Tax Act (MRTA), which legalized recreational cannabis in 2021, New York State lawmakers irresponsibly disregarded illegal pot sales and gang-related trafficking. They refuse to acknowledge increases in cannabis-impaired driving deaths and injuries.

MRTA advocates can’t claim these are unintended consequences, unlike other criminal justice reforms. We warned them well before 2021.

Coupled with other criminal justice reforms, both the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana have helped fuel addiction, gun violence, retail theft, gang activity, and illicit drug sales. New York State’s botched rollout and resultant black-market free-for-all encourages lawlessness.

In the 20 months it took OCM to issue the first retail dispensary license after MRTA’s passage, legitimate small operators poised to grow, produce, and sell cannabis watched New York’s market vaporize. It burned up at the hands of criminals who expanded their operations, as well as large, established medical marijuana corporations the state allowed to go to the head of the line. The very people MRTA was meant to help have been left out.

Incompetent legislation produces chaos.

We can’t wait another 20 months for lawmakers and OCM to confront the dangers MRTA imposes on New Yorkers. This situation will not work itself out over time. The longer we wait to stop unregulated cannabis and its use behind the wheel, the more people will die or be seriously injured.

New York’s tax revenue rush to legalize marijuana has forced communities who opted out of the dispensary and on-site consumption portions of MRTA to watch (and smell) people openly and lawlessly take advantage of a burgeoning black market. New York only had to look to Washington and Colorado to mitigate, in advance, difficulties in impaired driving enforcement and illegal marijuana sales and trafficking.

Had New York done its homework, it would have seen, too, that marijuana hasn’t exactly been the panacea predicted for reducing crime and homelessness. And the anticipated boon of tax revenue didn’t happen out west as quickly as lawmakers here would have us believe.

OCM's lackluster effort to educate New York’s citizens on the so-called “responsible use” of cannabis flies in the face of the victims of drugged driving. It is a hapless shrug of irresponsibility. It is tacit approval of misuse of the substance and trades public safety for tax revenues that will likely fail to live up to the fuzzy math upon which MRTA is based. Albany continues to prioritize profit and purported tax potential over the safety of its citizens.

We were told decriminalization and legalization of marijuana were for the sake of “equity” for underserved communities and people unfairly “targeted” by the war on drugs. Today, those communities wait for equity as licenses dribble out in less-than-equitable methods that favor corporations over people.

The number of victims will grow as more cannabis-impaired drivers take to the road under the mistaken presumption legal means non-intoxicating. Meanwhile, lawmakers and OCM bureaucrats wring their hands instead of confronting what is staring them in the face – that more people will die and suffer life-altering injuries the longer they wait.

Leaving victims and law enforcement to ask, “Where’s the equity in that?”

After decades of socio-political debate, the “war on drugs,” shifts in culture and attitude, and advances in medicine, New York became the 23rd state to legalize adult-use or “recreational” marijuana in 2021.

The first state-sanctioned legal retail cannabis was sold in New York City in 2022.

New York State followed a transition to legal use of cannabis and its various derivatives modeled by other U.S. states since California became the first state to approve its medical use in 1996, followed by several others in 1998. Colorado and Washington became the first states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012.

As of 2024, New York is one of 24 states (along with Washington D.C. and Guam) that have legalized recreational marijuana. Fourteen other states have authorized medical use only; marijuana remains illegal in 12 states. New York State agencies were directed by then-Governor Andrew Cuomo to assess a move toward marijuana decriminalization and legalization in their July 2018 Impact Statement.

Education around adult use of marijuana is a core mission of the newly created New York State Office of Cannabis Management. The agency maintains a constantly updated clearinghouse of information covering topics like impaired driving, public Consumption, health effects, and more here. Despite legal status in New York, users, medical and drug addiction experts, law enforcement officials, as well as state lawmakers all acknowledge marijuana consumption comes with certain levels of risk.

The plan to implement the directives set forth by the MRTA is part of the state's social and economic equity plan. A summary of OCM’s part of the plan can be found in the agency’s overview. In addition to its social justice directive, the OCM is focused on Public Safety and Health, and Economic Development.

Due to the newness of the MRTA and the Cannabis Law, regulatory updates are a matter of course for OCM. Those interested in any aspects of New York’s entry into the legal cannabis industry are well advised to track regulatory updates.

State officials predict marijuana sales over the first six years of New York’s budding market will be as high as $1.25 billion. In the first three years of New York’s regulated cannabis market (2021-2023), the state collected an estimated $84 million in tax revenue.

Cannabis, in all its forms, remains illegal under Federal laws administered by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).