The state budget bill signed into law by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) on Friday notably does not include a controversial marijuana provision the governor proposed earlier this year that would have allowed police to use the smell of marijuana as probable cause that a driver is impaired and then force them to take a drug test.
Amendments made in the legislature this week removed the provision, which a coalition of 60 reform groups had argued in a letter to Hochul and top lawmakers would “repeat some of the worst harms of the War on Drugs” and allow law enforcement to “restart unconstitutional racial profiling of drivers.”
The governor’s plan drew criticism from not just reform advocates but also the state’s Assembly majority leader and the governor-appointed head of the Office of Cannabis Management (OCM), who’d previously said the plan would undermine the goals of legalization and was “not going to work for New York.”
Historically, New York has been home to some of the country’s starkest racial disparities when it comes to enforcement of laws against marijuana. For example, Black people in New York City in the 2010s were more than nine times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people.
In Hochul’s original budget bill, a line would have added “the odor of cannabis, burnt cannabis or other drug” as a “reasonable cause” for law enforcement to stop and search a vehicle. An amended bill approved by lawmakers this week, however, removed that provision.
After both chambers approved the changes, the legislation went to the governor on Thursday and was signed into law the next day.
As for other cannabis-related provisions in the new state budget, one change eliminates the $229,000 annual salary for the chair of the state’s Cannabis Control Board (CCB).
That official, Tremaine Wright, said this week that she will not leave her post.
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