{"id":33359,"date":"2019-03-06T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-03-06T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/03\/06\/the-push-for-day-one-equity-in-new-yorks-legalization-effort\/"},"modified":"2019-03-06T12:37:04","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T20:37:04","slug":"the-push-for-day-one-equity-in-new-yorks-legalization-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/2019\/03\/06\/the-push-for-day-one-equity-in-new-yorks-legalization-effort\/","title":{"rendered":"The Push for \u2018Day One Equity\u2019 in New York\u2019s Legalization Effort"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

New York state appears to be on a final countdown to cannabis legalization in\u00a0some<\/em>\u00a0form. But with competing versions of the legalization bill contending in the statehouse in Albany, advocates who mounted the drive for legal cannabis around issues of social and racial justice have been holding meetings across the state to push for a law that addresses their concerns.<\/p>\n

The most recent, a \u201cForum on the Legalization of Marijuana\u201d held on Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side on March 3, brought these concerns into sharp focus \u2014 and displayed growing support for the agenda of \u201cDay One Equity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Politicians Join With Activists<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Most notable about the forum was the mix of powerful politicians and grassroots activists who took the podium in an auditorium of the Lillian Wald public housing project on the Lower East Side. The proceedings were opened by Harvey Epstein, the local assembly member who is a co-sponsor of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act, or\u00a0MRTA<\/a>.\u00a0He set the tone by saying that any legalization effort must \u201cdeal with profound injustice of the war on drugs and how it\u2019s impacted people of color. We don\u2019t want legislative process benefiting private equity firms and wealthy white folks.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHow do we create opportunities for communities that have been impacted by the drug war?\u201d Epstein asked rhetorically.\u00a0\u201cWe need to create legislation that does not continue the harm to communities of color.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up was Congressmember Carolyn Maloney, decked out in a New York Fire Department bunker coat emblazoned with her name on the back to promote her 9-11 Health and Compensation Bill. She also struck a forthright tone: \u201cWe need the War on Drugs to come to an end, and we have to start by decriminalizing and taxing and expunging convictions.\u201d She also noted that \u201cfed enforcement has become more severe under Trump.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maloney said that she is \u201ca\u00a0proud member of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus,\u201d and boasted her\u00a0support for the\u00a0Marijuana Justice Act<\/a>\u00a0\u201cto\u00a0legalize at the federal level, and take the tax revenue and invest it in the very communities that have been targeted and persecuted by the discriminatory war on drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer also took the stage to declare her support for MRTA.<\/p>\n

Why Decriminalization Isn\u2019t Enough<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It was the final speaker who really broke down the issues: Kassandra Frederique, director of the\u00a0New York state chapter<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0Drug Policy Action<\/a>, the advocacy and political arm of the\u00a0Drug Policy Alliance<\/a>. She portrayed a long arc of history that has finally brought the Empire State within sight of cannabis justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York state pioneered mandatory minimum sentences nationwide with the Rockefeller laws, which included cannabis,\u201d Frederique sad, referring to the harsh drug laws enacted by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1973. \u201cDecriminalization of cannabis in New York state four years later came about because the law was impacting white kids, if not nearly in the same numbers as black and Latino kids. Mothers of white kids started complaining to district attorneys who in turn complained to the state Assembly. Yet from the early \u201990s to now, there have been 800,000 arrests for cannabis in New York state.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, Frederique asserted, was due to New York City\u2019s hardline Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his policy of \u201cstop & frisk\u201d\u00a0policing. \u201cCannabis arrests soared in the \u201990s. We arrested 50,684 in New York City in 2011 for marijuana \u2014 more than would fit in Yankee Stadium. Now who uses marijuana? Everybody. But young white kids are not getting arrested. Eighty percent of marijuana arrests in the city last year were black and Latino.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pot arrests continued due to a\u00a0loophole in the decriminalization law<\/a>\u00a0that allowed for arrests when the stuff is in public view. Kids stopped by the cops would be intimidated into revealing their stashes \u2014 and get slapped with the cuffs. Frederique called this a tactic of \u201centrapment.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Frederique emphasized that the effects of these busts go beyond jail time. \u201cPeople are getting deported, kicked out of public housing, losing custody of their kids. So, the demand for regulated cannabis has to be as comprehensive as the damage that was done. NYCHA [the New York City Housing Authority] has to stop evicting families, the courts have got to stop working with ICE.\u201d Despite New York having been declared a \u201csanctuary city\u201d under Mayor Bill de Blasio, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u00a0continue to make arrests<\/a>\u00a0in the city\u2019s courtrooms.<\/p>\n

Frederique sees the system again starting to respond to popular pressure. \u201cThree of five DAs in New York City say they won\u2019t prosecute\u00a0for cannabis because communities have persistently been on their heads telling them they had to move. The widespread entrapment has been strategic and intentional, so we must be strategic and intentional in addressing the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The racial disparity in cannabis arrests persists statewide and is even worse in many upstate cities than in the Big Apple, Frederique said. But now the district attorneys in Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse have followed\u00a0those of Manhattan, Brooklyn\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0the Bronx<\/a>\u00a0in declining to prosecute for minor cannabis offenses. \u201cThat\u2019s not because these people bumped their heads and decided it was the right thing to do, but due to community advocacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Frederique said that this experience shows that \u201cdecrim is not enough \u2014 if you give them the option to continue to criminalize black and brown bodies, they will continue to criminalize them. We can\u2019t have a law that will leave open the conditions for another Eric Garner.\u201d Garner was the black man killed in a police choke-hold\u00a0on Staten Island in 2014, after he was stopped for selling loose cigarettes.<\/p>\n

She also recalled the case of Ramarley Graham, a black 18-year-old who was shot in his own apartment\u00a0in the Bronx in 2012. Police followed him inside after supposedly witnessing him in a street pot deal. Frederique said \u201cpeople were afraid to stand with the family\u201d after Graham was slain because of the cannabis stigma.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to break the back of prohibition and find a way to hold people accountable that does not involve use of force in which people can die,\u201d she stressed. \u201cNew York state has to show everyone else how to get legalization right, because we taught everyone how to criminalize.\u201d<\/p>\n

She also urged a broader interpretation of cannabis equity. \u201cBusiness opportunities are not sufficient,\u201d Frederique said. \u201cWe need\u00a0community empowerment. Money from regulated cannabis must be invested in the communities that were criminalized by prohibition. That is not negotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

MRTA Versus CRTA\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Lawmakers in Albany are currently facing two legalization bills. The MRTA was drawn up by legislators in the Assembly and state Senate, and various drafts of it have been\u00a0repeatedly introduced<\/a>\u00a0in recent years. This year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced his own Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act, or CRTA,\u00a0attaching it as a package with the state budget<\/a>. Predictably, it is more restrictive. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most significantly, as Frederique pointed out, CRTA \u201cincreases penalties on those outside the regulated market,\u201d while MRTA does not.<\/p>\n

CRTA also gives greater power to the governor, allowing him to appoint a \u201cdirector of cannabis management,\u201d with no input from lawmakers. Under MRTA, the state Senate would get to sign off on the cannabis czar through a confirmation hearing. The consensus at the forum was to support MRTA rather than CRTA \u2014 but with greater equity measures written into the former.<\/p>\n

Social Justice and Start-Ups\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n

After the main panel were two break-out sessions, one on the social justice aspects of legalization and one on starting up cannabis businesses. There was actually broad overlap between these two concerns.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the first session, Saki Fenderson of start-up edibles vendor\u00a0Tainted Love<\/a>, noted how over the generations, the main economies available to black and Latino communities in the metro area were criminalized. \u201cThey took bootlegging away from us, they took numbers away from us and they never gave anything back. We\u2019re not asking for handouts, we\u2019re asking to stop being hamstrung. We don\u2019t want our kids to be arrested at 15 years old and being barred from jobs for the rest of their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was Fenderson who invoked the forum\u2019s catchphrase: \u201cWe need equity on day one when cannabis is legalized in New York state.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the session on canna-businesses Lower East Side native Emily Ramos of the CBD products start-up High Mi Madre, related how cannabis criminalization had a devastating impact on her own family. \u201cMy dad was actually arrested in 1993 in the Baruch Houses for selling pot,\u201d she said, referring to a nearby public-housing complex. \u201cHe went to jail for five years.\u201d In her comments, quoted by Lower Manhattan weekly\u00a0The Villager<\/a>, she said she now sees cannabis as a positive opportunity. \u201cWe want to get into adult recreational,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Brooklyn Church Hosts Cannabis Confab<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Just a week before the Lower East Side forum, Brooklyn\u2019s historic\u00a0Emmanuel Baptist Church\u00a0in Clinton Hill was the somewhat unlikely scene of a conference entitled the \u201cBusiness of Cannabis Mini-Summit.\u201d The church\u2019s Rev. Anthony Trufant teamed up to organize the event with\u00a0Women Grow<\/a>, an organization promoting women in the cannabis industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo many cases communities of color seem to be left at the station while the train of opportunity pulls out. So this is an instance to talk about and inform our community, our constituency on cannabis,\u201d Rev. Trufant told the gathering, according to the Brooklyn news site\u00a0Kings County Politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New York State Attorney General Letitia James, the most prominent member of Emmanuel Baptist Church, was one of the opening speakers at the event. James threw her support behind cannabis legalization, but asserted it must \u201cbe done right\u201d to correct the injustices of prohibition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week also saw the first hearings in New York City Council to discuss the #MarijuanaJustice<\/a>\u00a0package being pushed by the Council\u2019s Progressive Caucus. This would call upon state and federal authorities to legalize cannabis around a\u00a0far-reaching program of equity<\/a>. Let\u2019s hope lawmakers upstate are taking note.<\/p>\n

TELL US<\/strong>, when do you think New York will legalize marijuana?<\/p>\n

The post The Push for \u2018Day One Equity\u2019 in New York\u2019s Legalization Effort<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n


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New York state appears to be on a final countdown to cannabis legalization in\u00a0some\u00a0form. But with competing versions of the legalization bill contending in the statehouse in Albany, advocates who mounted the drive for legal cannabis around issues of social and racial justice have been holding meetings across the stateContinue 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":[8749,50,8756,592,3920,687,6854,208,593,81,319],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359"}],"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=33359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33360,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33359\/revisions\/33360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}