Schumer: Senate will act on marijuana legalization with or without Biden

So wtf are you talking about.

A few points of evidence to consider regarding the reluctance of the Cuomo administration to act on marijuana reform....

  1. Public opinion polling in New York going back nearly a full decade shows that between 60% and 2/3rds of all registered New York voters have favored either decriminalization.

  2. Cuomo has been governor for nearly a decade and enjoyed a democratic majority in both the State Assembly and Senate for almost the entirety of his term.

  3. Prior to 2018 Cuomo's stance was 'Aw shucks, I'd really like to decriminalize it but the IDC (Independent Democratic Conference) won't let me. I mention 2018 because as of that midterm the IDC lost almost all of their seats rendering Cuomo's excuse totally invalid. It's worth noting at this point that Cuomo has a long documented history of working behind the scenes with the IDC to torpedo legislation that both he and they thought was too progressive.

  4. Since then his excuse has been "Oh yeah, we're definitely going to get it done but we just need to figure out how to split the tax money." It is especially notable that he has had three different cracks at trying to get it legalized when the legislative session began. Somehow, this thing that he really, really, really, wanted to get done managed to fail each time.

  5. Which is funny because when it came to passing the NY SAFE ACT another thing he really, really, really wanted to get done he not only got it done but was roundly criticized for unilateral action and executive overreach. When it came to this issue he seemed to have no problem stretching the state constitution to it's limits to accomplish his goal. So why not this for marijuana?

  6. Then there is the timing of legalization finally happening. He happens to be engulfed in a series of scandals which may bear some very strong legal and political consequences against him. And now, as if all of the barriers to legalization have disappeared overnight, the bill gets passed and now we're not talking about how he maybe did some sex crimes to eight plus women.

Considering all of these in total it seems incredibly unlikely that the public stance taken by Cuomo RE legalization was really where he stood on the issue. As demonstrated by his willingness to use executive power in other areas, his unwillingness to use those powers to legalize marijuana, his history of working with what were basically liberal-republicans to undermine progressive legislation behind the scenes, and that he only moved to legalization when under intense public scrutiny, it seems like he wanted to benefit from saying he was for it in public without having to actually act on it.

My two cents, take it or leave it.

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