Gov. Cuomo is finally feeling the reefer madness.
The governor announced on Tuesday that he will appoint a panel to examine the burning issue of legalizing recreational marijuana in New York.
“This is an important topic. It is a hotly debated topic, pun intended, and it would be nice to have some facts in the middle of the debate once in a while,” Cuomo said during his budget address in Albany.
The panel will examine what kind of an impact a pot program would have on New York state.
“I think we should fund [the Department of Health] to do a study, let them work with the State Police, other agencies, look at the health impact, the economic impact, the state of the law,” Cuomo said.
“If it was legalized in Jersey and it was legal in Massachusetts and the federal government allowed it to go ahead, what would that do to New York, because it’s right in the middle?”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who was sworn in on Tuesday, has said he plans to legalize pot in the first 100 days of his administration, estimating the state will haul in about $300 million by taxing it.
But not everyone in the Garden State is wild for weed.
When Murphy attended a Martin Luther King Jr. Day service in Newark on Monday, Bishop Jethro James of the Paradise Baptist Church brought the crowd to its feet when he said legalized pot would have a devastating effect on poor neighborhoods.
Cuomo’s commission marks a 180-degree reversal of his buzzkill position on it last year.
“It’s a gateway drug, and marijuana leads to other drugs and there’s a lot of proof that that’s true,” Cuomo said bluntly last February.
“There’s two sides to the argument. But I, as of this date, I am unconvinced on recreational marijuana.”
An Emerson College public opinion survey released in November showed that 62 percent of registered New York voters are in favor of legalizing and taxing pot.
Republican gubernatorial hopeful Joel Giambra, a former Erie County executive, has come out in support of legalization to raise funds for infrastructure, including New York City’s subways.
Recreational marijuana is now legal in eight states.
New York state legalized the use of medical marijuana in 2016 after Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act.
Hillary Peckham, the chief operations officer of Etain Health, praised Cuomo’s proposed commission, calling it a “game-changer.”
“New York’s medical marijuana has made the state more economically competitive and has ushered in a new era of compassionate care by giving patients and families suffering from debilitating illness greater flexibility and choices to get the life-sustaining medical care they need,” she said in a statement.