Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic Governor of New York, will soon be unveiling a plan to legalize marijuana in the state recreationally, according to an announcement from his office this week.
“The goal of this administration is to create a model program for regulated adult-use cannabis — and the best way to do that is to ensure our final proposal captures the views of everyday New Yorkers,” said Cuomo spokesman Tyrone Stevens to the New York Post.
According to the spokesman, the proposal will be coming in early 2019.
New York state Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, a Democrat, told the Post, “We probably wouldn’t allow smoking cannabis out in public, but might allow it in some establishments. The health questions about smoking cannabis are nothing like problems with tobacco, in part because no one would smoke a comparable quantity.”
It was just last February that Cuomo had referred to marijuana as a “gateway drug.” He told reporters, “It’s a gateway drug, and marijuana leads to other drugs and there’s a lot of proof that that’s true.”
