New York is trying to treat an addictive substance just like any other product.
When New York legalized recreational marijuana in 2021, the future seemed bright. “It has been a long road to get here, but it will be worth the wait,” State Senator Liz Krueger, a sponsor of the legislation, told New Yorkers. Legalization, she and others said, meant a wave of new jobs and new tax revenue. It meant an end to racist policing of marijuana and the start of equity, with rules that put those harmed by prohibition at the front of the line for licenses. And it meant easy-to-buy weed for the 1.6 million adult New Yorkers who already partook.
Three years later, things are not going to plan. Gov. Kathy Hochul has called New York’s legalization rollout “a disaster.” Mayor Eric Adams has spent months demanding that Albany fix the current system. “What happened?” The New Yorker recently asked in a feature on the collapse of the state’s marijuana “revolution.” Many New Yorkers are asking the same thing.
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Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal.
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