Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York has called for Governor Andrew Cuomo to “wake up” on the marijuana legalization process.
The mayor has urged the governor to pick up the pace on completing the process of legalizing weed, telling him and state lawmakers to “wake up” and seal the deal.
“The state of New York needs to get in gear here,” de Blasio said at a daily press briefing.
“We had a big, long, multiyear discussion over legalizing cannabis. We saw the state legislature act, now the state needs to do something about it, [and] they still haven’t.”
“It’s time for the state to wake up and do its job on this really important issue,” de Blasio said.
“After all these years I can’t believe that the mayor still doesn’t know how state government works,” responded Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi.
“We are ready to advance nominations but they need senate confirmation and Senate is not in session nor have they indicated when they would [be] returning so in the meantime we continue to work to implement this law.”
Cuomo still needs to nominate an executive director for his new Office of Cannabis Management and name appointees to the Cannabis Control Board.
“We agree there’s a lot of unfinished business with the Senate, and we’re ready to submit our [weed-related] nominations, and we hope [legislators] reconvene and act on these and our MTA legislation and nominations,” Azzopardi has said before.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins responded, “I hope it’s not true,” adding, “Obviously, the Cannabis Control Board has nothing to do with the MTA.
“I hope we can work it out, but … I think that we have an opportunity to get this cannabis board up and running, and I believe that we need to do that so that we can at least make good on our legislation,” she said earlier in the week on “Capital Tonight.”
