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Organizations representing New York state's sheriffs and police chiefs highlighted concerns over traffic safety and public health Thursday in calling on the Legislature to hit the brakes on legalizing marijuana for adult, recreational use.

The New York State Sheriffs Association and State Association of Chiefs of Police joined public health officials and advocates against the legalization of marijuana Thursday to explain why they want lawmakers to keep the drug illegal for nonmedical use.

Oneida County Sheriff Robert Maciol, a Democrat who serves as president of the Sheriffs' Association, said his organization remains opposed to legalization because there are no methods in place, or funding, to enforce laws against driving while under the influence of marijuana.

“People will die as a result of people making the destructive decision of using marijuana and then operating a motor vehicle,” Maciol said.

Democrats in the Legislature who are pushing for legalization aren't necessarily split with Maciol and other county sheriffs on that concern. State Sen. Todd Kaminsky, D-Nassau, held a roundtable last month among law enforcement, prosecutors and other stakeholders on how the state could work to keep roads safe while legalizing the drug.

“We have a long way to go in our state to make sure we have safe roads if marijuana is made legal,” Kaminsky said at the time. “Certainly, we don't want to have the sales start occurring before the law enforcement is ready.”

Kaminsky said he plans to bring those concerns to members of his conference who want to legalize the drug, which could have both a positive and negative fiscal impact for the state. The positive, according to DOH, would be as much as $678 million in annual tax revenue from the drug.

The negative, according to law enforcement officers, would be the funding constraints on local police agencies if lawmakers don't allocate more funds for additional resources, like newly trained drug detection dogs to replace current canines who are taught to sniff out marijuana. Those can cost about $9,000 to find and train, Maciol said.

But chief among their concerns, funding-wise, is the limited number of officers in the state currently trained to detect when someone is driving under the influence of drugs. There are only 250 of those officers, called Drug Recognition Experts, statewide, according to Kaminsky.

Maciol said there are only a few trained in Oneida County, so if one isn't working at the time of a traffic stop there's no way for an officer who isn't trained to confirm if an individual is intoxicated from drugs. Officers can't ask for a blood sample from a driver unless someone was seriously injured or killed in a crash.

That's a key issue that lawmakers will discuss among themselves and with Gov. Andrew Cuomo as they continue to hammer out a final proposal to legalize marijuana for recreational, adult use.

Cuomo and Democrats who control both houses of the state Legislature have come out in support of legalizing the drug in recent years. Cuomo announced his support after a report from the state Department of Health recommended legalization last year.

Democrats in the Legislature have sponsored bills to legalize the drug for several years, but the option didn't stand a chance at becoming law until this year when Democrats took a firm majority in the state Senate for the first time in nearly a decade.

A final proposal to legalize the drug is still being worked out between Cuomo and lawmakers, who have said it may come up for a vote later than expected. It was thought to be dealt with in the state budget in March, but Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie recently said lawmakers may need more time to come to an agreement.

Many lawmakers see legalization as an issue of criminal justice. Statistics show people of color have been arrested more often on low-level drug charges, in New York City in particular. Maciol said they don't expect legalization to solve the disparities that can exist between race and reported crime levels.

“The unlawful possession of marijuana has always been a non-custodial arrest,” Maciol said. “The myth that people are in jail because they possessed marijuana in small amounts, it's not true.”

Luke Niforatos from Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an advocacy group against legalization, also argued that allowing the drug to be used for adult, recreational use may not eliminate that disparity. He claimed that the gap in arrest rates between people of color and white individuals may continue after legalization since public consumption and distribution would likely still be illegal.

But for arrests that can often happen when a member of law enforcement simply finds drugs on someone or in their home, without having been consumed, Maciol argued those offenses still cause harm to the public because marijuana has not yet been legalized.

“It's illegal,” Maciol said. “It's our job to enforce the law.”

Those low-level offenses are what lawmakers are trying to do away with through legalization. They have argued that allowing the drug would reduce the number of people who spend time in court over those offenses, which can often remain on someone's criminal record for years if they're convicted. That can affect someone's prospects of getting a job and, in the case of incarceration, delay other aspects of their life, like education and relationships.

If Cuomo and the Legislature are not able to come to an agreement on legalization by April through the state budget, they could also tackle the issue after the spending plan is approved. The legislative session ends in June.

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