As Medical Marijuana Moves Through Senate, Debate Intensifies

Mayor's Office's Flickr

When asked during his 2001 mayoral campaign if he ever smoked marijuana, Mayor Bloomberg replied, "You bet I did. And I enjoyed it." And over the weekend, he dressed up like a hippie and clowned around with cast members from Hair. But don't be fooled! Nanny Bloomberg is still a prohibitionist; when asked about a coming marijuana legalization referendum in California, Bloomberg said, "I would vote against legalizing marijuana." The Mayor explained that the stuff "keeps getting stronger and stronger" and could lead to "greater use of drugs, which isn't good." Meanwhile, the New York State Senate is preparing to vote on a bill that would legalize, regulate, and tax marijuana for medicinal purposes in New York.

Of course, the Post is very troubled about all this, and today columnist Abby Wisse Schachter argues that the Senate's bill would treat medical marijuana differently than other prescription drugs by taxing it. As such, she opines, "maybe it's a step on the way to legalizing pot altogether—or maybe to taxing all medications." And fearthermore:

The state Health Department would issue licenses to specific dispensaries and growers; the Senate budget projects this could yield as much as $15 million for the state next year alone. But the real gold is the sales tax on every dope purchase—which could bring in up to $500 million for Albany's coffers. But weed would be unique in having a sales tax attached to it. The purchase of prescription pharmaceuticals, and even some over-the-counter drugs, is generally exempt from taxation because of their medicinal value. As the Tax Foundation's Bill Ahern asks, "If they are going to tax marijuana, isn't that just like an admission that it has no medical value?"

We contacted Mike Meno, the Director of Communications at the Marijuana Policy Project, for a rebuttal, and he did not disappoint:

The first thing the article gets wrong is that the tax would not be on the medicine itself, but rather on the dispensers—just like we tax other drugs. Second, it would be an excise tax on the product itself, not the sales transaction, so it wouldn't be a sales tax (or a "sin" tax). Third, the claim that New York could end up with recommendation mills (like in parts of California) is not accurate, because New York's law would require patients to have an ongoing relationship with their doctor. Fourth, because of federal law, marijuana can't actually be prescribed, but is instead recommended. Because of this, marijuana would not be a prescription drug but would rather be in a class of its own.
But the most glaring inaccuracy in the article is the assertion that marijuana is not medicine. Marijuana's medical value has been supported by an ever-growing body of peer-reviewed scientific studies, public health organizations including the American Nurses Association, American Public Health Association, American Academy of HIV Medicine and American College of Physicians, and most recently by a $9 million study from the University of California, San Diego, that was based on 15 separate clinical trials.

There's a reason 14 other states have passed medical marijuana laws and more than a dozen others are considering them—it's because doctors and patients say it works, and that they need safe and legal access to this legitimate treatment option. If some in New York see a way to make tax revenue from this new industry during tough economic times, that isn't reason to dismiss marijuana's proven medical efficacy.

But who are you going to believe, that crazy stoner or the columnist who once described Plan B as "basically a double dose of the regular birth-control pill."

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By John Del Signore in News on March 30, 2010 1:52 PM

Comments [rss]

malcolmkyle

How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?

If you support prohibition then you've helped trigger the worst crime wave in history.

If you support prohibition you've a helped create a black market with massive incentives to hook both adults and children alike.

If you support prohibition you've helped to make these dangerous substances available in schools and prisons.

If you support prohibition you've helped raise gang warfare to a level not seen since the days of alcohol bootlegging.

If you support prohibition you've helped create the prison-for-profit synergy with drug lords.

If you support prohibition you've helped remove many important civil liberties from those citizens you falsely claim to represent.

If you support prohibition you've helped put previously unknown and contaminated drugs on the streets.

If you support prohibition you've helped to escalate Theft, Muggings and Burglaries.

If you support prohibition you've helped to divert scarce law-enforcement resources away from protecting your fellow citizens from the ever escalating violence against their person or property.

If you support prohibition you've helped overcrowd the courts and prisons, thus making it increasingly impossible to curtail the people who are hurting and terrorizing others.

Leonard Krivitsky, MD, DD

The fact that medical marijuana is highly effective in a variety of medical conditions ranging from pain to muscle spasms to nausea to malnutrition to glaucoma to just name a few is really beyond dispute. Unable to contradict these obvious facts, the opponents have engaged in numerous fear-tactics such as claiming that marijuana is addictive, that it is a "gateway drug" and that medical marijuana legalization will lead to increase in crime rate. As an addiction medicine specialist, I am more interested in truth than in political correctness, so here are the facts:

1. Marijuana's addiction potential is a fraction of that of alcohol (3% vs. 10%)

2. The "gateway drug" theory is by now completely discredited by the science of addiction medicine, for if this " theory" were true, most of us would have become drug addicts long time ago by being exposed to innumerable substances, not only to alcohol, nicotine or marijuana, but all the way down to caffeine and sugar.

3. According to Substance Abuse: A Comprehensive Textbook, 4-th Edition, page 267 cannabis use suppresses, rather than incites, a violent crime. Medical marijuana legalization will curb the drug gang violence south of the border as well.

I worked in drug addiction clinics of Philadelphia for years, and I have seen plenty of cases of severe dependence on opiates as well as many "nerve" and "sleeping" pills. Recent overdose death of Corey Haim is a good illustration of what I have observed over and over - an addiction to current "legal" controlled prescription drugs. At the same time I have seen very, very few questionable cases of marijuana dependence and NEVER a case of marijuana "overdose". Since medical marijuana is also highly effective in a variety of medical conditions, it should be legalized ASAP and made available to our veterans the same way it is available to Canadian veterans. In Canada the government even pays for medical marijuana for veterans. http://www.cannabisculture.com/v2/content/canada-pay-military-veterans-medical-marijuana

whereas here we are still debating whether or not we will succumb to fear-tactics of the "opponents".

malcolmkyle

Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless.

Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us.

Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation.

By its very nature prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous, ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved.

Many of us have now finally wised up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation, which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco --two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to the absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society.

There is an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. If you are not capable of understanding this connection, then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. Anybody 'halfway bright' and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding, that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem; it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand.

No amount of money, police powers, weaponry, diminution of rights and liberties, wishful thinking or pseudo-science will make our streets safer; only an end to prohibition can do that. How much longer are you willing to foolishly risk your own survival by continuing to ignore the obvious, historically confirmed solution?

If you still support the kool aid mass suicide cult of prohibition, and erroneously believe that you can win a war without logic and practical solutions, then prepare yourself for even more death, corruption, terrorism, sickness, imprisonment, unemployment, foreclosed homes, and the complete loss of the rule of law and the Bill of Rights.

"A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

Abraham Lincoln

The only thing prohibition successfully does is prohibit regulation & taxation while turning even our schools and prisons into black markets for drugs. Regulation would mean the opposite!

Brian

Historic statewide initiative in California to legalize, control, and tax cannabis. Help build national support for the movement. Sign up on the website, join the campaign! taxcannabis.org

nicemarmot

You know Bloomie doesn't believe that gateway drug crap, he knows perfectly well from his own experience that it isn't true! He's just saying what he thinks will please the voters on the conservative side.

AnarchoXen

Still on the gateway tip huh mayor? Douche...old bollocks from and old douche...

Guest

...need some serious pot to want to read everything above.

Brian

Historic statewide initiative in California to legalize, control, and tax cannabis. Help build national support for the movement. Sign up on the website, join the campaign! taxcannabis.org

John Clavis

Shame on Mayor Bloomberg for falling back on the long-since-discredited gateway argument.

maximusrex

I think it is partially decriminalized. You should only get a fine, as long as you're not using it in public, for carrying quantities less than or equal to one ounce.

Now, how will one go about getting a scrip...

cxb

EVERY TIME THE GOVT HAS RAISED TAXES, OUR DEBT HAS GROWN, NOT SHRUNK.

But most of you STILL believe their comical arguments that they need more revenue to balance the budget!!!!

(Hey, what happens every time the MTA doubles their revenue? Yup: they REDUCE services! Suckers!)

FUN FACT:

Psycho Mike increased City Hall's already insane budget by a mere 50% in just 8 years!

(From an obscene $40 BILLION every 12 months to today's $60 BILLION every 12 months! WHERE THE FUCK did that extra $20 BILLION every 12 months DISAPPEAR TO?)

(Again, you sheep believe the hype: pensions, medicare, blah blah. POliticians lie to you every day b/c YOU BELIEVER EVERY LIE. EX: Rudy and Bloomberg increased the schools budget from an obscene $6 BILLION a year to $22 billion a year! HOORAY say the sheep! But none of that money went to education! EX: Rudy and Mike closed PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN PUBLIC BUILDINGS (ie, they were paying zero rent)and then "built" new ones in... PRIVATE BUILDINGS owned by their friends, at ABOVE-MARKET rents, for the next 30,000 years to infinity! That ONE criminal scam alone will cost you suckers TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS in perpetuity!)

But you continue to trust the media that told you Mike is popular blah blah.

(Chancellor Hitler had a 90% "approval rating" and the Nazi Party won elections SOLELY b/c of media lies. WHat will it take b/f you people realize media is the root of all evil??)

[author moves to California so he can be high 24 hours a day to live on this fucktard planet]

(Hey, if Gothamist was 1% sincere, they'd give me a column to expose Govt corruption. ANY GUESSES WHY THEY'D NEVER DO THIS? B/c Bloombag is a mini-Hitler in more ways than one.)

cxb

WRONG. Both psycho-criminals, Rudy and Mike, increased low-level pot busts more than any other humans EVER, EVER, EVER (which is why all the media endorsed them and covered u their scandals).

Bloombag's NYPD has begun leaving WHITE pot smokers alone more than Rudy, but that's only so they can focus on blacks and latinos so they can compile all their fingerprints.

I don't think any of you will EVER realize how scary Bloomberg is, even AFTER he cancelled TWO voter referendums (which not even Hitler or Stalin did)!!

B/c you all trust the MEDIA that was bought off by this psychopath.

(Even Gothamist got cash from the Emperor. NEVER FORGET THIS.)

For 16 YEARS now the entire media (left AND right wing) have insisted that the Republicans have fixed NYC and made it great.

Record debt. Record taxes. Record crime. (Oh, you still believe the crime stats. Right.) (So identity theft barely happens today, like white collar crime, right? Or do those crimes not count?) Record lawsuits. Record arrests of NYPD officers. Even Bloombag's #1 choice for POlice Commish is headed to FEDERAL PRISON and there's NOTHING I can do to convince you that you've been lied to harder than any other citizens in recorded history?

Hey Mike... finish these sheep off, willya?

Just raise property taxes ANOTHER 25% and teach these morons a real lesson! (And then give more 50% pay raises to your friends and cronies!)

jles

How did we jump from A to C here.....

Can we first decriminalize Marijuana so my hard earned tax dollars don't go towards imprisoning stoners as if they were violent criminals?

Then we can debate legalization....

cxb

WHY DON'T WE TRY OUTLAWING HYPOCRISY BY POLITICIANS just for a year, so Bloombag MUST GO TO JAIL as he's arrested more people for smoking pot than any other human in history (including Looney Giuliani)!

Or why not a HYPOCRISY TAX?

Everytime a politician says ONE THING and does another, or doesn't practice what they preach, they must PAY HUGE "TAXES" or fines to the citizenry.

Ask Tax Hike Mike what he thinks. He's such a "reformer" (well, that's what Gothamist and all corporate media told me)and he loves taxes AND he's not a corrupt two-face so he'll embrace THIS SIN TAX, right?

[Gothamist agrees but doesn't have the courage to tell the naked emperor he's got no clothes on]

jles

You claim that he's arrested more people than anyone in history, and he's AGAINST legalization.....but that somehow makes him a hypocrite? You may need to explain that one.

Everytime a politician says one thing and does another, they stand to LOSE their next election, and it's the very foundation of democracy. Clearly New Yorkers disagree with you there. Plus, Mike pays himself $1 a year, you really think we should TAX him HUGE on that? What's that gonna be, like 60 cents?

You're just full of answers (to the real questions too).