To weed or not to weed, that’s the question
The candidate to Governor and former actress Cynthia Nixon has caused a stir in the city of New York since her nomination due to her excessive support to the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, besides the therapeutic one. The actress who gained popularity with the series Sex and the City has generated a great controversy, mainly because the country is between two waters regarding the point of view whether it is beneficial or not for the nation the legalization of Marijuana. The candidate for the position places this proposal in the axis of her campaign to get the Democratic nomination for the upcoming elections.
However, already some entrepreneurs have jumped and MedMen, a California pharmaceutical company, has just opened its first store on Fifth Avenue to sell according the legal restrictions legal cannabis-derived products.
Several states have legalized marijuana, while other federal governments like the one in New York are still reluctant. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been one of the detractors of the use of Marijuana for recreational purposes. According to the politician its legalization would shoot the violence rates because many would want to control a market that clearly is very prosperous. He believes that in the United States it is not necessary to authorize marijuana, but to combat more effectively heroin and fentanyl, as well as the cartels.
Since Donald Trump became US president, the fight against the legalization of marijuana at federal level has intensified. The president supported the passing of five memoranda that discouraged the prosecution of marijuana-related crimes, green-lighting the federal attorneys to act against the illegal consumption and possession of that drug.
Meanwhile, the US Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, supported the creation of a federal task force to reduce the high incidence of crime in the country, and refused to legalize marijuana as a solution to the issue of drugs.
Cynthia Nixon along with Bill Blasio, mayor of New York, is one of those defenders of Marijuana legalization. Little or nothing has been said about her political agenda for the city of New York that by far has Cannabis as its biggest problem. The actress, however, before the primaries, has been responsible for execrating her rival Andrew Cuomo, arguing his lack of ethics and his misgivings to approve the use of Marijuana.
Nixon known for the role of Miranda Hobbes in Sex in the City aims to apply rates and fees to businesses that sell cannabis derivatives to increase New York City's income. The most interesting thing is that the aspiring governor has forgotten very pressing topics for New York such as the violence on its streets and the emigration that with the new government has become a crucial issue for anyone who wants a legislative or federal position.
But the Miranda Hobbes of Sex and the City has said through a home video that if the legalization of Marijuana is achieved, the rate of black people’s arrests would be lower. The reduction is due, according to her theory, to the fact that 80% of New Yorkers arrested because of marijuana are African-Americans or Latinos, despite both white and people of color consume it at a similar ratio.
The political candidate considers that from this problem derived other ones like finding a home and the violence in the ghettos and communities that the cosmopolitan city of New York has. To make her hypothesis more interesting, the applicant states that several Latinos and undocumented migrants are exposed more to deportation since some do not have work or housing and are in the illegal sale business of Marijuana to survive.
From that point of view, Nixon is right. Currently, several drugs dealers in New York have or are of migrant descent. Most of them do not manage to get a job, since shop owners and managers of work centers do not want to expose themselves to get visited by Immigration Customs Enforcement agents.
Hence, several have to seek as an alternative source of income the sale of narcotics that has New York as one of the cities with greatest demand. This is the point of origin of a vortex of social calamities affecting the citizens of New York. But, I do not think that the solution to the social ills of New York is to legalize Marijuana or not, although it is no less true that perhaps it would be a palliative to the crisis of that city.
Currently Colorado, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Alaska, California, Maine and Massachusetts have approved the cannabis consumption for recreational purposes, including the District of Columbia in Washington. Meanwhile, a total of 30 of the 50 States of the country have legalized the medicinal use of marijuana despite the rejection of the federal drug agency.
Isn’t time for us to legalize it for the rest of population?
It is the proposal of the actress who in her opinion the legalization of Marijuana could regulate the market in New York and large sums of money through taxes would recover. Approximately more than 3 billion dollars could be obtained from the application of regulations to the cannabis market in New York, according to analysts.
Nixon is right; marijuana has become a big business in the United States. This incipient industry only last year obtained 9,000 million dollars in sales. BDS Analytics points out that revenues outnumbered snack stores or annual profits from Pampers diapers. Now with California's entry into the business, the figures are superior. It is estimated a growth of 11,000 million dollars in 2018 and 21,000 million dollars by 2021.
Also the aspiring to Governor Politician not only foresees the investment of these profits in social programs for the city, but also with this income she believes that employment opportunities would be generated. On this subject, the numbers give the reason to the actress. The industry has also created jobs and opportunities. So far, 9,397 active licenses have been granted for marijuana businesses. This includes growers, manufacturers, retailers, dispensaries, distributors and testing laboratories. In 2017, 121,000 people were employed by the incipient industry.
Whether or not Cynthia Nixon is the winner of the race for New York’s governor position, the country will have to continue analyzing exhaustively all the pros and cons of legalizing cannabis. New York, the largest city in the United States, could well be the subject of a pilot study. Will Miranda Hobbes be right?