Former \u201cSex and the City\u201d star Cynthia Nixon last month announced her candidacy to unseat New York\u2019s Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in this year\u2019s Democratic primary, challenging the establishmentarian incumbent from a left-populist position. She spoke in favor of cannabis legalization from the start \u2014 but has now kicked that plank into high gear.<\/p>\n
In a brief living-room video\u00a0posted to Twitter<\/a>\u00a0on April 11, Nixon said legalizing marijuana would bring millions of dollars in added tax revenue to the Empire State \u2014 and also end \u201ca key front in the racist war on drugs.\u201d She emphasized that 80 percent of New Yorkers arrested for cannabis use are black or Latino, \u201cdespite the fact that whites and people of color use marijuana at roughly the same rates.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe consequences follow people for the rest of their lives, making it harder to get jobs or housing, and for noncitizens, putting them in the crosshairs for deportation,\u201d she said. \u201cWe have to stop putting people of color in jail for something that white people do with impunity. In 2018, in a blue state like New York, marijuana shouldn\u2019t even be an issue. If there was more political courage coming out of Albany, we would have done this already.\u201d<\/p>\n She closed provocatively: \u201cThe simple truth is, for white people, the use of marijuana has effectively been legal, for a long time. Isn\u2019t it time we legalize it for everyone else?\u201d<\/p>\n A lot of you have been asking about my position on marijuana. Here it is. pic.twitter.com\/iEKLHgClFN<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Cynthia Nixon (@CynthiaNixon) April 11, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Cuomo responded defensively, noting that in January he\u2019d announced plans to have the state\u2019s health department study the impacts of legalizing cannabis.\u00a0\u201cI think we are actually ahead on [the cannabis legalization issue],\u201d Cuomo said,\u00a0according to<\/a>\u00a0the Daily News.<\/p>\n When asked about Nixon\u2019s cannabis endorsement on April 11, Cuomo responded by harkening back to his health department directive to study legalization. At the time of the study\u2019s commissioning, Cuomo invoked a turning of the tide, both in the Northeast region and nationally. \u201c[If cannabis] was legalized in Jersey and it was legal in Massachusetts and the federal government allowed it to go ahead, what would that do to New York, because it\u2019s right in the middle?\u201d he\u00a0asked rhetorically<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Nixon responded to Cuomo\u2019s deflection to the legalization study strongly. \u201cYou don\u2019t need a study to figure out our marijuana laws are disproportionately putting people of color in jail,\u201d she\u00a0shot back<\/a>\u00a0on her Twitter account.<\/p>\n She also recalled that Cuomo \u2014 as recently as a year ago \u2014 was still echoing<\/a> the discredited<\/a> notion that cannabis is a \u201cgateway drug.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the state\u2019s new governor, Phil Murphy, took office in January after campaigning on a pledge to legalize cannabis in the Garden State. He\u00a0may face a fight<\/a>\u00a0in the legislature, but he has\u00a0meanwhile announced an expansion<\/a>\u00a0of the state\u2019s\u00a0medical marijuana program. \u201cThe days of making residents jump through hoops are coming to an end,\u201d Murphy said in the announcement last month. He added later: \u201cWe recognize that patients should be treated as patients, not criminals.\u201d<\/p>\n Back in New York, the Nixon candidacy is clearly putting more pressure on Cuomo \u2014 and represents much more of an insurgent phenomenon than Jersey\u2019s Murphy. Although Nixon has been\u00a0portrayed as a pawn<\/a>\u00a0of New York City\u2019s Mayor Bill de Blasio in his notorious rivalry with Cuomo, she has actually\u00a0slammed the both of them<\/a>\u00a0for passing the buck back and forth over funding low-income housing and mass transit.<\/p>\n An amusing dust-up revealed how the state\u2019s political establishment views Nixon as a threatening candidate. New York City\u2019s former City Council speaker Christine Quinn last week dissed Nixon as an \u201cunqualified lesbian\u201d \u2014 a\u00a0faux pas<\/i>\u00a0that completely backfired on her. Quinn (herself a lesbian) was forced to apologize in the subsequent outrage, while Nixon\u2019s campaign\u00a0seized on the comments<\/a>, and started selling \u201cUnqualified Lesbian\u201d T-shirts.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/b>\u00a0do you think New York should legalize cannabis?<\/p>\n The post Cynthia Nixon Endorses Cannabis Legalization in New York Governor\u2019s Race<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Former \u201cSex and the City\u201d star Cynthia Nixon last month announced her candidacy to unseat New York\u2019s Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in this year\u2019s Democratic primary, challenging the establishmentarian incumbent from a left-populist position. She spoke in favor of cannabis legalization from the start \u2014 but has now kicked thatContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,216,3918,3919,3920,215,208,3921,81,1883,319],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25280,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25279\/revisions\/25280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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\nRead More: Cynthia Nixon Endorses Cannabis Legalization in New York Governor\u2019s Race<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"