Tag: new york

New York Bill Would Legalize Psychedelics Like Psilocybin, Mescaline And Ibogaine

Another psychedelics bill has been prefiled in New York for the 2025 session—this one calling for the legalization of certain entheogenic substances such as psilocybin and ibogaine for adults 21 and older.

Sponsored by Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (D), along with eight cosponsors, the legislation would amend state statute to make legal the “possession, use, cultivation, production, creation, analysis, gifting, exchange, or sharing by or between natural persons of twenty-one years of age or older of a natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogen.”

DMT, ibogaine, mescaline, psilocybin and psilocyn would fall under the definition of “natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogens” that would be legalized by the bill.

Further, the legislation would authorize people to engage in psychedelic services “with or without remuneration,” as well as use the entheogens in religious ceremonies.

State and local law enforcement would be prohibited from cooperating or providing assistance to the federal government for the purpose of enforcing controlled substances laws against activities made legal under the state law.

The measure goes on to outline a series of protections: People couldn’t lose professional licenses, public assistance or be denied mental health or behavioral health services simply for using psychedelics. And their lawful use also couldn’t be the sole basis for a child welfare investigation.

New York localities wouldn’t be allowed to enact laws criminalizing psychedelics, but they could “adopt and implement legislation and policies which bear directly on or are related to natural plant or fungus-based hallucinogens in furtherance” of the bill.

Finally, the proposal would remove psilocybin, psilocyn, DMT, mescaline and ibogaine from the state’s banned substances list.

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New York Democrat Files Bills To Restrict THC Potency In Marijuana And Ban Consumption Within 30 Feet Of Children

A New York Democrat has introduced a pair of bills that would put new restrictions on marijuana in the state. One measure would limit the THC potency of cannabis products, while the other would prohibit cannabis consumption within 30 feet of where any child lives.

Both bills, A977 and A1007, were filed on Wednesday by Assemblymember Phil Steck. The potency proposal would limit marijuana flower to no more than 15 percent delta-9 THC, while all other cannabis products—including concentrates and hemp-derived products—would be capped at 25 percent delta-9 THC.

Growing, processing or distributing products exceeding those limits would be a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine.

The consumption measure, meanwhile, would outlaw smoking or vaping cannabis “within thirty feet of a child or within thirty feet of any location in which children reside or attend for any recreational or educational purpose.”

The restriction would include “areas separated by walls, closed door or floors within a building,” meaning the change could theoretically limit cannabis consumption even within users’ private residences if their neighbors have kids.

In addition to that provision, the consumption bill would also step up penalties for second and subsequent offenses around unlawful marijuana use, such as consuming near schools or using in areas where smoking or vaping is otherwise prohibited. Currently those activities are civil violations that carry a fine of up to $25 or community service. Under Steck’s bill, that would still be true for the first offense, but subsequent offenses would be charged as Class B misdemeanors.

A legislative memo in support of tighter consumption restrictions says that research has “shown that second-hand smoke from vaping and smoking cannabis are proven to be harmful to the health of adults and children.”

“Most adults have to ability to remove themselves from the area, children may not have the same ability,” the memo says. “This bill requires adults maintain a safe distance from children when smoking or vaping cannabis.”

As for Steck’s proposed THC limit, the memo in support of that proposal says that “the most egregious omission in legalizing adult-use cannabis in New York State is the absence of any cap on its potency.”

“Most people can use cannabis safely,” it says, but with increased availability of higher THC concentrations, there have been more adverse drug reactions.”

The memo also says that in particular, “edibles are trouble,” citing a study out of Colorado that found that edibles accounted for less than 1 percent of statewide cannabis sales but were responsible for 11 percent of emergency room visits.

“With an eye towards public health and safety,” it adds, “this legislation imposes a 15 percent cap on any cannabis flower, and a 25 percent cap on the concentration of the active ingredient delta-9 tetrahydrocannibinol in all manufactured cannabis products in the state.”

Notably, the bill would not adjust the total allowable THC limits in state-legal cannabis edibles, and the percentage-based limits would likely do little to rein in potency of the products. Even at the proposed 25 percent THC limit, a gummy weighing just 2 grams could contain up to half a gram of THC—a massive dose for most consumers.

The advocacy group NORML quickly came out against the new potency bill, A977, calling its proposed limits “arbitrary” in an email to supporters on Thursday.

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Democrats Screw Over Working-Class Americans, and You Better Thank Them for It

I regret to inform you that left-wing governance has struck again. In New York City, sky-high, around-the-clock “congestion pricing” has been put into effect for a large portion of Manhattan. That means working-class individuals will now be forced to shell out $9.00 every single time they cross 60th Street, with even higher fees for commercial vehicles. 

No worries, though. This is all for their good because this is supposedly going to raise $15,000,000,000 for “mass transit improvements.” In other words, you’ll ride the subway, and you’ll like it.

What blows my mind about this is how openly manipulative it is. New York City has taken multiple lanes of almost every road in Manhattan and turned them into inefficient, little-used bike lanes. That is certainly a major factor in the increase in congestion. Yet, instead of just getting rid of the bike lanes as any sane person would do, Democrats have decided the best way forward is to gouge drivers to force them onto their garbage subway system. 

That would be the same system where a woman was burned alive recently. Never mind what happened to Daniel Penny, who was thankfully acquitted after he was charged with manslaughter and negligent homicide for protecting people from a threatening vagrant.

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OF COURSE: Climate Change Warrior Kathy Hochul Has Spent More Than $400K on Private Jets

New York Governor Kathy Hochul cares very deeply about climate change. She recently signed a bill that aims to fine fossil fuel companies $75 billion for supposed damage to the climate.

In her personal life however, she follows a different set of rules, naturally.

Hochul has spent a small fortune on private jets. Doesn’t that kind of violate the whole ‘save the world from climate change’ thing?

The New York Post reported:

Gov. Hochul, NY’s biggest climate-change booster, has spent $415K on private jets: ‘It’s very wasteful’

She’s taking a tough line on fossil fuels — except the ones she’s spewing.

Gov. Hochul — who recently approved a controversial law that will force oil, natural-gas and coal companies to pony up $75 billion for carbon emissions allegedly contributing to global warming — has taken at least 30 flights aboard private jets since 2021, state Board of Elections records show.

The $415,000 tab was picked up by her campaign committee, records show.

“It’s very wasteful, especially for an elected official. There is no reason why any elected official in New York should be taking a private jet. Nearly everywhere in New York or upstate has a [commercial] airport that will take you anywhere in the country. New York is one of the most well-connected places on the planet,” said a local pilot experienced in private aviation.

Hochul flew with two private-airline companies, Zephyr Jets and Apollo Jets, in the last four years. It is unclear what the destinations were, but no flight cost less than $5,000 while her most expensive was trip was billed Jan. 17 for $38,594.00, records show.

Is anyone surprised?

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Postal Worker Stabbed to Death at NYC Deli by ‘Transgender’ Suspect With Lengthy Rap Sheet

A ‘transgender’ suspect arrested for stabbing a postal worker to death at a New York City deli has a lengthy criminal history, including multiple arrests for crimes involving blades, according to reports.

The horrifying attack unfolded just after 2:30 p.m. on Thursday in Harlem.

Ray Hodges, 36, was on-duty as a USPS letter carrier when he popped in for lunch at a deli where he was well-known as a regular, the New York Post reports.

While preparing to order, another customer cut in front of him, sparking a dispute, witnesses say.

Multiple customers and employees tried to break up the altercation, which escalated when the suspect spat on Hodges, prompting him to throw a “bottle of lemon juice at her,” one worker said.

“That’s when she took the knife and came to him and I had to move.”

The suspect reportedly slashed Hodges repeatedly in the neck and stomach.

Hodges was rushed to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Jaia Cruz, 24, was taken into custody at the scene and charged with murder.

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Bodycam footage shows New York state correction officers beating prisoner to death

On Friday, the New York state attorney general’s office released video footage showing correction officers at the Marcy Correctional Facility near Utica, New York, beating to death a handcuffed inmate, 43-year-old Robert Brooks.

The bodycams of four of the killers recorded the horrific incident, which has been broadly viewed in the United States and internationally. He was pronounced dead the next day. Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that he died from asphyxiation due to neck compression.

Thirteen correction officers and a prison nurse have been terminated from their jobs for the killing. The FBI and the state attorney general’s office are investigating the incident, although as of this writing charges have not been brought against the guards.

In lying and insincere public statements, prominent state officials have expressed shock and horror at the killing. Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul said she was “outraged and horrified after seeing footage of the senseless killing.” New York state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) head Daniel Martuscello told the media, “This type of behavior cannot be normalized, and I will not allow it to be within DOCCS.”

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Two more female cops close to disgraced NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, including his driver, raked in massive OT and other perks

More female officers in disgraced top cop Jeffrey Maddrey’s orbit pulled down massive overtime and other perks, The Post has learned.

The driver for the former chief of department made an eye-popping $163,414 in OT last year — and resigned days after The Post exposed her boss’s alleged sleazy conduct at police headquarters, records show.  

Detective Ingrid Sanders was the seventh-highest overtime earner in the department, boosting her total salary last fiscal year to $352,462, records show.

That put her pay not far behind Lt. Quathisha Epps, the top earner who made $403,515, including $204,453 in OT. Epps filed an explosive Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint accusing Maddrey of giving Epps overtime shifts in exchange for sex, The Post revealed in a front-page exclusive Sunday.

On the day of the Post’s inquiry, Maddrey quit. Sanders was immediately transferred from One Police Plaza to a Queens precinct, and filed for retirement on Dec. 23, The Post found in police documents.

Sanders is a first-grade detective — the top grade — who served in the chief of department’s office since December 2022. She followed Maddrey there from the Patrol Services Bureau. She didn’t return multiple messages.

Maddrey also sought favors for second detective, Ada Reyes, The Post has learned.

Epps, Maddrey’s personnel manager, told The Post that part of her OT was devoted to taking care of Reyes.

“The overtime that he would give me he would tell me to buy her things like get her some towels and things from Walmart, a microwave, and stuff like that so she doesn’t have to come out of her pocket,” Epps said. “I make the overtime and then I give things to her.

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NYC Desk-Jockey Cop Used Questionable Overtime to Get Paid Same Amount as Joe Biden Last Year

The highest-paid employee of the New York City Police Department is facing an internal affairs probe after making over $400,000 last year then trying to file for retirement.

Lt. Quathisha Epps, who worked as an administrator, is under investigation over allegations that she fudged her overtime hours and endorsed her own time slips, per an exclusive report from the New York Post.

The staffer supposedly worked 1,627 hours of overtime beyond her usual shifts, putting her average at 74 hours per week. However, unnamed sources told the Post there were “complaints over her coming into work late, leaving early, or not showing up at all.”

Epps raked in $204,000 in overtime on top of her nearly $165,000 base salary, placing her salary near $400,000 and making her the highest-paid employee across the entire NYPD.

The police force has 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian staffers, per official statistics.

And she made more than all of them.

She therefore made more than NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, in whose office she worked. Her boss made a comparatively dismal $292,000.

Epps was suspended after she filed for retirement at 51 years old, a move that will affect her pension and lose her about $12,000 per year since she is leaving just short of 20 years into her time on the force.

But she will still pull in $16,000 per month.

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Luigi Mangione & the Dangers of Terrorism Charges

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg unveiled new charges on Dec. 17 against Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

While Mangione already faced second-degree murder and weapons charges, the unsealed indictment reveals an escalation: New York prosecutors have charged Mangione with first-degree murder “in furtherance of terrorism.”

Bragg’s choice to invoke the big “T” word came as a surprise; it’s not often associated with a single, targeted killing. In fact, prosecutors are charging Mangione using a state law hatched after the 9/11 attacks “to combat the evils of terrorism.”

Tacking terrorism onto the indictment allows the district attorney to upgrade the murder charges from the second to the first degree; under New York law, first-degree murder charges are normally reserved for crimes like serial or mass killings or the murder of police officers.

In previous cases, Manhattan prosecutors have used the state domestic terror law to convict people accused of plotting to bomb synagogues or recruiting support for ISIS.

In 2019, a white supremacist pled guilty to New York terrorism charges after he killed a Black man with a sword with the intent of starting a “worldwide race war.”

Bragg said he levied the charge against Mangione because his alleged killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO was intended “to sow terror.”

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Kathy Hochul signs law that fines energy companies $75 billion for ‘climate change’

New Yorkers, beware the law of unintended consequences.

From an item at the New York Post comes the news that Kathy Hochul has just signed a new bill, “modeled after a federal law that holds polluters responsible for abandoned toxic-waste sites,” which establishes the New York Climate Superfund. This endowment will be funded by energy companies that deal in gas, oil, and coal, and the money will finance “resiliency projects,” like initiatives to shore up the coast and mitigate flooding—because obviously as every progressive and mainstream media consumer “knows,” energy that comes from “fossil fuels” cause “climate change.”

As of now, a number of companies operating in New York have been hit with $75 billion in fines, which are to be paid into the fund over the span of a decade. Per the NY Post:

The oil giant Saudi Aramco of Saudi Arabia could be slapped with the largest annual assessment of any company — $640 million a year — for emitting 31,269 million tons of greenhouse gases from 2000 to 2020.

Aramco — formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. — is owned by the Saudi Royal family.

The state-owned Mexican oil firm Petróleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, emitted 9,512 tons of CO2 and could face an $193 million assessment for generating 9,512 million tons of greenhouse gases.

Russia’s Lukoil could be assessed with a $100 million yearly fee for spewing 4,912 millions of CO2.

The 38 companies identified as carbon polluters include American petro giants such as Exxon and Chevron as well as Shell and BP in the UK, Total Energies IES in France, Petrobras in Brazil, BHP in Australia, Glencore in Switzerland, Equinor in Norway and ENI in Italy.

Another greedy, communistic money grab. What the left doesn’t get as they cheer on the theft is that once it’s normalized for the “ultra rich” it’s then normalized for the “rich”… and then it’s normalized for the upper middle class… then the lower middle class, and so on—it’s a war on wealth, using Saul Alinsky’s infamous line about “rub[bing] raw the sores of discontent” as a vehicle.

Did you know that when the federal income tax started it only applied to less than 1% of Americans? Now look where we are.

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