There was a definitive trend among the states where adult-use legalization bills passed this year: all four had top-down support from their governors. And, in all four of these states, the efforts were years in the making. In New York, for example, Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes and Sen. Liz Krueger pushed legalization for nearly a decade. And, while their proposal ultimately passed, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced legalization through his budget plan for three years, including this year. When a legalization push ran out of time in New Mexico, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called for the special session during which lawmakers got the legislation over the finish line. “Rushing through amendments in the final hours of a session, when there’s a mountain of other very important work to be done, is not the right way to do something of this magnitude,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement ahead of the special session. But, she continued, “we are very close. And we will finish the job.” It was far from Lujan-Grisham’s first vote of support for legalization.
Nushin Rashidian, Cannabis Wire, 07/06/2021 20:00:00