Cuomo Moves Closer to Marijuana Legalization in New York

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo took a step closer to voicing full-throated support for legal marijuana Friday, embracing elements of a state Health Department report that favored legalization.

Cuomo, addressing reporters after an unrelated speech in Brooklyn, said New York would no longer have the option of trying to simply prevent the flow of the drug into the state now that its neighbors in Massachusetts and New Jersey are moving forward with plans to legalize the drug.

“The situation on marijuana is changing,” Cuomo said. He stopped short of saying he would back legalization in the state in response to the report, but then spoke of logistics as if he would.

“Now you have to answer specifics,” Cuomo told reporters. “Who sells it? Where do they sell it? What quantity can you sell? That to me, the devil’s in the details. And to come up with a full program, that’s what we have to answer.”

He said he did not expect a new law on the subject before next year.

The governor’s comments followed the release Friday of the Health Department’s findings, a 75-page report that weighed arguments for and against legalization, and concluded the state should have a regulated market. The report observed that such a move would bring tax benefits to the state, health benefits to some individuals and a reduction in arrests of minority residents, who are disproportionately affected by police enforcement of marijuana laws.

The report recommended a tax on marijuana of between 7 and 10 percent and a 1-ounce limit to the amount of the drug that could be bought. That amount, the report found, costs between $270 and $340 in the current illicit retail market in New York, the total size of which is estimated to be as much as $3.5 billion a year.

“The positive effects of a regulated marijuana market in NYS outweigh the potential negative impacts,” the Health Department concluded. “Areas that may be a cause for concern can be mitigated with regulation and proper use of public education that is tailored to address key populations.”

The report’s release came amid growing pressure on the governor in his re-election campaign. Cuomo’s Democratic rival, actress Cynthia Nixon, has voiced her support for legalized marijuana, a position favored among many in the party. Across the Hudson, the new governor of New Jersey, Philip D. Murphy, has vowed to see marijuana made legal by the end of the year.

Cuomo has been less enthusiastic, once referring to marijuana as a “gateway drug.” But more recently, he has appeared to recognize an inevitability in the state and directed his Health Department to study the effects of a regulated, legal market.

The move toward legalization would put New York among the growing number of states to legalize the drug, including California, Colorado and Washington. But support in Albany was not overflowing on Friday.

“We’re reviewing it,” said Michael Whyland, a spokesman for the state Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, a Bronx Democrat. A spokesman for the state Senate Republicans, Scott Reif, offered no new comment but reiterated that their priority is not “legalizing drugs.”

In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he is convening a task force to prepare for the eventuality that the state decides to legalize marijuana, with a report expected by the end of the year. De Blasio has not offered support for legalization, worrying that such a move would result in “the corporatization of the marijuana industry.”

A spokesman for de Blasio declined to comment on the state report.

By moving slower than other states, New York benefited from lessons learned elsewhere, said Chris Alexander, who heads the marijuana legalization campaign in New York for Drug Policy Alliance. For one, he said, the Health Department looked at Oregon, where early high taxation meant that some marijuana users continued to buy in the illicit market where prices were lower, and recommended lower taxes from the outset.

The report represented a turning point for Cuomo, Alexander said. “Its significance cannot be understated,” he said. “We know that he is using this as his pivot point. He needed some kind of epiphany that was based in something.”