State Senate Should Allow the Use of Marijuana to Treat a Few Conditions

The approval by the State Senate Health Committee of the bill to legalize medical marijuana is a big step in overcoming opposition in the full Senate and making the drug available to a small number of desperate patients.

As it has in the past, the Assembly passed its version of medical marijuana by a wide margin earlier this week. However, medical marijuana measures have died in the State Senate each year. The latest measure stands a chance of passage because of hard lobbying by patients and medical groups and because it is more limited in scope.

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ALBANY - For the fifth time in seven years, the State Assembly on Tuesday passed a law legalizing medical marijuana, backing a measure that would far surpass a program Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced this year.

But with less than four weeks left in the legislative session, the prospects for passage in the State Senate remained uncertain.

The bill allows the possession and use of up to two and a half ounces of marijuana by seriously ill patients whom doctors, physician assistants or nurse practitioners have certified. It permits organizations to establish dispensaries to deliver the drug to registered users and their caregivers, part of what advocates call a "seed to sale" system meant to prevent abuse or illegal use.

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With the state Legislature inching toward legalizing medical marijuana, absolutely tight controls are crucial. New York must not make the mistakes California did after its medical marijuana law passed by referendum in 1996. The law was so loosey-goosey that virtually anyone could grow, sell, prescribe or ingest the weed for practically any ailment, real or imagined. Predictably, the state was overrun by pot shops frequented by recreational smokers who easily obtained prescriptions from pliant "practitioners" based on most any health complaint.

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NEW YORK -- America is rushing headlong toward legalizing the recreational use of marijuana.

A growing majority -- 52 percent as of a Pew survey released just last month -- favor legalization, and an even larger majority of millennials (69 percent) feels the same way. Colorado and Washington are the first states to move decisively in this direction, but they won't be the last.

I basically think this is an OK development. Like Mark Kleiman, a public policy professor at UCLA who is my guru on the regulation of controlled substances, I see full commercial legalization as a truly terrible idea, while I think noncommercial legalization, ideally via monopolies owned and operated by state governments, would be an improvement over the status quo. Regardless, marijuana legalization is coming, one way or another. One thing that is really striking about the new Pew data is that 69 percent of Americans believe, correctly, that alcohol is more harmful to society than marijuana.

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Fewer Stops-&-Frisks, but Still Far Too Many Possession Arrests

'Unjust and wrong" is how mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio described the New York Police Department's crusade against low-level marijuana users. Citing the "disastrous consequences" for the tens of thousands of New Yorkers, the vast majority of them black and Hispanic, arrested annually by the NYPD in recent years over small amounts of pot, de Blasio vowed that as mayor he'd nix the "ridiculous" policy and push for the decriminalization of minor possession.

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The recent letter to the editor titled "Marijuana a medicine for N.Y. to avoid" contains misinformation that is necessary to correct.

Medical cannabis is a treatment option with a low risk of dependence, a low side-effect profile, and minimal detrimental health effects. The Compassionate Care Act is a highly regulated bill which will allow for use of medical cannabis for certain patients in New York state, with multiple safeguards against diversion, including mandatory procurement of patient identification cards and utilization of I-STOP.

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It's not every vote of the state Senate Health Committee that's greeted with applause from ordinary citizens. But the dozens of New Yorkers packed into Room 124 of the state Capitol on Tuesday had reason to celebrate. In a 9-8 nail-biter, the committee voted to approve the Compassionate Care Act, which would legalize medical marijuana in New York State - moving the bill closer to becoming law than it has ever been before.

"I am beyond words excited," said one member of the cheering section, Melissa Hilt of East Greenbush. "It gives my daughter a chance, and that's all we're looking for."

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Push for Legalization Makes Key Progress

ALBANY Legalizing the use of medical marijuana passed a crucial hurdle Tuesday when the Senate Health Committee approved a bill allowing its use by patients with certain health conditions and under tightly regulated growing conditions.

The vote is the furthest that the measure has ever gotten in the Senate, where it has died year after year following passage in the Assembly. But this year, it gained momentum with a push by a growing coalition of patient and medical groups, and had the political advantage of being sponsored by Sen. Diane J. Savino, a hard-driving lawmaker from Staten Island who is part of a small coalition of independent Democrats who rule the Senate with Republicans.

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The flood of heroin coming into and going out of New York City has surged to the highest levels in more than two decades, alarming law enforcement officials who say that bigger players are now entering the market to sell the drug here and to feed a growing appetite along the East Coast.

The amount of heroin seized in investigations involving the city's special narcotics prosecutor has already surpassed last year's totals, and is higher than any year going back to 1991.

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Assemblyman Steve Katz, the pro-marijuana Republican, made a brief appearance in the documentary episode of HBO's "Vice."

The "Rocky Mountain High" episode, which first ran April 23, dealt with the explosion of legalized marijuana in the country and included a segment from a pro-marijuana investor meeting in Las Vegas in January.

Katz, R-Yorktown, Westchester County, attended the event and part of his speech made it into the show.

"Ten years ago, can you imagine having the cojone (sic) or the foresight or the guts to be able to start a business like this?" Katz said. "In the next 24 months, prohibition, for the most part, gonna be over."

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On May 8, the Yonkers Police Department's Emergency Service Unit began carrying naloxone and have since had to use the drug to save two people in the throes of a heroin overdose.

YONKERS - Members of the police department's Emergency Service Unit saved a 24-year-old Carmel man overdosing on heroin, the second time in a week they successfully utilized naloxone.

The man was found unconscious in the back seat of a parked car along Yonkers and Central Park avenues at approximately 12:14 a.m., Saturday. He had no radial pulse and was not breathing, police said.

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As a retired physician with over 35 years of experience in the addictions field and as a board member for the Erie County Council for the Prevention of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, I am writing in opposition to the proposed Senate bill (4406-B) that will legalize medical marijuana in New York State. There is not an adequate base of research that shows marijuana, in its most common form (smoked), is effective for treating any serious medical condition.

Therefore, no major group of medical experts supports the use of smoked marijuana for treatment of health problems. In a recent review, the director of the California Center for Medicine Cannabis Research stated that marijuana could be helpful in the treatment of nerve and spasm pain of multiple sclerosis, but stated other indications are less clear.

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More than a decade ago the state Legislature considered a bill that would have allowed doctors to prescribe marijuana. It required a doctor to "certify that a patient has a serious condition that in the practitioner's judgment can and should be treated" with marijuana and "that other drugs or treatments would not be as effective."

The bill went nowhere, as did its successors in following years. Now, the state seems to be on the verge of passing legislation that is identical in some ways but very different in one.

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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Susan Rusinko, who says she uses marijuana daily to manage the effects of multiple sclerosis, says she believes New York lawmakers will legalize the drug for medical use this year.

"I really feel it," said Rusinko, of Auburn, who has been at the forefront of a growing effort to convince lawmakers to allow for the drug's use. "2014. It's going to happen. It's going to be huge."

Rusinko said she was optimistic despite the fact that a key, long-time medical marijuana proponent in the Assembly has not signed onto the latest bill in the New York State Senate.

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When Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in January, community groups and juvenile justice advocates hoped that his administration would significantly decrease the numbers of black and Latino young people who are unfairly - and in some cases, illegally - arrested and dragged through the court system for possession of tiny amounts of marijuana. But a new analysis of state arrest data by a nonprofit called the Marijuana Arrest Research Project, which studies police policy, suggests that the de Blasio administration is on track to equal the more than 28,600 low-level marijuana arrests that were made under Michael Bloomberg in 2013. The administration needs to review Police Department policy to make sure these arrests are necessary and being fairly made.

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I was delighted to read Erie County Republican Committee Chairman Nicholas A. Langworthy's commentary that urged legislators to vote for the Compassionate Care Act. Republicans have a long tradition of encouraging help for the sick, including effusive support for medical cannabis from Newt Gingrich back in 1982.

Our state legislators can rest assured that research confirms the plant's medical efficacy and safety. It reliably helps those suffering from AIDS-related wasting, the side effects of chemotherapy, symptoms of multiple sclerosis and various types of pain. It also shows promise for many other ailments.

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It's the Economy

There are many things that bother Jon Cooper about the market for marijuana.

"It's nearly impossible to find a consistent product," said Cooper, one of the legion of tech start-up guys and M.B.A.s plunging into the world of pot. "You go into a dispensary and buy something called 'Sour Diesel' and try it. You go to another dispensary, buy 'Sour Diesel,' and it's a different experience. You go back to the first dispensary, buy it again and it's not the same, either."

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EDINA, Minn. - AFTER a ruinous 30-year experiment in harsh sentences for narcotics trafficking resulting in mass incarceration, policy makers are having second thoughts. Many states, including Texas, have reformed their laws to shorten sentences. Congress is giving serious consideration to the Smarter Sentencing Act, which would do the same. The United States Sentencing Commission has just adopted a proposal to revise federal guidelines.

And most recently, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that President Obama intends to use his executive pardon power to release hundreds or even thousands of federal prisoners with narcotics convictions (I am on a committee to train lawyers for the project). Something like that hasn't happened since President John F. Kennedy granted clemency to more than 200 prisoners convicted of drug crimes.

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On Staten Island, Rising Tide of Heroin Takes Hold

The obituaries have a certain sameness to them: full of praise and regret for lives cut short, marked by telltale details and omissions. The deaths occurred at home, or at a friend's house elsewhere on Staten Island. The mourned were often young and white, and although how they died was never mentioned, nearly everyone knew or suspected the cause.

A 23-year-old man, a cello student in high school and the son of an elevator company vice president died in March. A former high school hockey player who delivered newspapers died in 2013 at 22. Another 23-year-old man who was working construction died at home in July 2012. Family members and autopsy reports revealed that they died from heroin or combinations of drugs including heroin.

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I have read endless letters about doctors giving narcotics to people who don't need them and also people who abuse the system by selling their drugs. I couldn't agree more that these are problems.

But there is a different concern for people who are truly in chronic pain. They don't abuse or sell their meds. That's my problem. I am a person who has a legitimate reason for needing to be on pain meds. It has caused me constant pain that interferes with my entire life, from my everyday abilities to my sleep, not to mention the hardship it has taken on my financial needs.

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