New York moves towards legalising cannabis

New York has taken a major step towards legalising cannabis after the state’s top health official declared “the pros of a regulated programme outweigh the cons”.

Health commissioner Dr Howard Zucker said that he will recommend the move to Governor Andrew Cuomo following an upcoming report commissioned by the Democrat. It appears to be a dramatic reversal for Mr Cuomo who once described cannabis as a “gateway” drug and the new move comes the same week that Canada passed a law legalising the recreational use of marijuana.

Dr Zucker said there was no evidence to show that smoking cannabis paved the way to harder drugs. “This is no different to medicine. When new facts come in, you have new data.” He added: “The report also concludes that should a regulated programme be implemented, special consideration will be given to a number of factors including the age of who can purchase marijuana, who can grow and distribute it and at what rate the product would be taxed.”

Dr Zucker also announced plans to expand the medicinal use of cannabis in New York to opioid users. New York state legalised the drug’s prescription for conditions such as cancer, Aids and epilepsy in 2014.

The Department of Health said it is “committed to growing New York’s Medical Marijuana Programme responsibly”. There are nearly 60,000 certified cannabis patients in New York state and over 1,600 practitioners registered to prescribe the drug.

In the UK, Home Secretary Sajid Javid this week announced a review into medicinal use of the illegal Class B drug following the case of Billy Caldwell, 12, who suffers from severe epilepsy and had his cannabis oil medicine confiscated. It was returned to him after doctors made clear it was a “medical emergency”.

In New York, Dr Ilana Zablozki-Amir, of Brooklyn Integrative Medicine, said medicinal cannabis has had a “tremendous impact”. Most of her patients use it for chronic pain.

She said: “People can function better. People are getting off their opioids, people are getting off their other medications, people are utilising it without their heads feeling fuzzy.”

Britain should legalise cannabis for medicinal use, she said, adding: “It’s absolutely life changing… If people are utilising it as we would like them to, the success is more than 90 per cent”.