'Cannabis 2.0': Cuomo Counsel Pushes Renewed Effort at Marijuana Law at State Bar Conference
The marijuana industry-focused bill, if passed, would bring the state's regulation and taxation rules for various elements of the marijuana industry, from industrial to food to medical to recreational, into one state Office of Cannabis Management.
January 28, 2020 at 06:40 PM
3 minute read
Gov. Andrew Cuomo is again pushing this year a marijuana bill that would bring together, under a single new state office, the multifaceted regulation and taxation of the growing marijuana industry in the state, said an assistant counsel to the governor at a state bar conference Tuesday.
If passed in full, the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act would legalize adult, recreational use of marijuana in New York for the first time. But as the assistant counsel, Axel Bernabe, made clear Tuesday while speaking to a conference room full of lawyers at the New York State Bar Association's annual meeting, if that controversial aspect of the sprawling proposal is thwarted—as it was last year by legislators—there are many other elements of the bill.
The act itself, a version of which was first proposed in Albany by Cuomo last year but was not passed, proposes bringing the state's regulation and taxation rules for various elements of the marijuana industry—from industrial to food to medical to recreational—into one state Office of Cannabis Management. Currently, some parts of the wide-ranging industry are overseen and regulated by different divisions of the state government, Bernabe said.
He added that he believes the consolidation of government oversight of the industry would help boost New York's monitoring and regulating of the industry, while also bringing it to or near the forefront for how such oversight is handled by states around the country.
"We think of ourselves a bit as Cannabis 2.0," Bernabe said. "I think it was a bit innovative," he added, referring to the idea of bringing all regulation and taxation of cannabis "under one office with a one director."
He also indicated that the move would help facilitate the Cuomo administration's larger philosophy for marijuana oversight, which Bernabe said was "shifting enforcement of marijuana from a criminal law framework to a public health framework."
Regarding the proposed legalization of recreational use by adults of marijuana, the act proposes taxing such use but no longer attaching a criminal penalty to it, Bernabe said.
The new office, if passed this year by the Legislature and signed into law, would continue and likely expand upon the state's detailed oversight of the use of medical marijuana, he added, and it would create the position of a state chief medical officer for marijuana medical use.
In the food-related area of hemp cannabis, said Bernabe, "this is probably the most comprehensive bill in the country when it comes to hemp."
"If you have any clients in the hemp space," he said to several dozen attorneys who appeared to listen closely inside the Hilton Hotel conference room in Manhattan, "you are gong to need to understand this law."
The law would allow hemp growers to supply hemp to to medical manufacturers, he said, soon adding the hemp law as proposed overall is "a whole new world, [and] you're going to have to understand the whole" law and its structure.
This year's version of the proposed act, said Bernabe, has some differences from last year's proposed law, though in large part is the same or similar to the previous bill.
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