Cuomo Moves to Legalize Recreational Marijuana in New York Within Months
Source: NYT
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that he would push to legalize recreational marijuana next year, a move that could generate more than $1.7 billion in sales annually and put New York in line with several neighboring states.
The highly anticipated proposal came in a speech in Manhattan on Monday, in which the governor outlined his agenda for the first 100 days of his third term. Mr. Cuomo framed the speech as a reflection on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt — the former president who was once a New York governor himself — would do today, mixing sweeping rhetoric about American ideals with ominous warnings about the failings of the Trump administration.
The speech, which seemed delivered with a national audience in mind, could prolong slow-burning speculation about Mr. Cuomo’s presidential ambitions. It also showed, in striking detail, the governor’s leftward evolution in his eight years in office, from a business-friendly centrist who considered marijuana a “gateway drug,” to a self-described progressive calling for recreational marijuana, taxes on the rich and a ban on corporate political donations.
“The fact is we have had two criminal justice systems: one for the wealthy and the well off, and one for everyone else,” Mr. Cuomo said before introducing the cannabis proposal, describing the injustice that he said had “for too long targeted the African-American and minority communities.”
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/nyregion/marijuana-legalization-cuomo.html
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I'm a chronic pain sufferer from a 1998 botched spinal fusion. I take methadone, but with the big "opioid epidemic" in the U.S. my pain and symptom management doctor has cut my medication in half. I asked about medical marijuana, but since it's still considered a schedule one narcotic by the federal government he won't prescribe it. Every three months I have to pee in a cup, and if I test positive for any "street drugs" (marijuana included) he can void my opioid contract. There's no possible way I can get through a day without the Methadone, so I'm still screwed. Damned junkies. They've completely ruined the lives of people who actually need strong pain medication to have any sort of a "normal" life.
So now, while everyone else in New York State will be enjoying nice bowls of coma-inducing OG Kush, chronic pain sufferers will be left on the outside again! This shit is really getting to my attitude. 
but I can't take the chance of testing positive and voiding my opioid contract with the Pain and Symptom Management Dr. These guys aren't fucking around now. They'll bounce you for anything just to get you off their treatment records. Actual pain patients are the unintentional casualties of this "war on opioids". It sucks, bigly! 
