April 4, 2014 9:12 p.m. ET
ALBANY—Support is growing in the state Legislature for a full-scale legalization of medical marijuana, an issue that likely will be among a handful of battles in the Capitol over the next few months.
In January, Gov. Andrew Cuomo introduced his own more limited effort to make pot available to the very ill. But in the months since then, more than a half-dozen state senators who had previously publicly opposed full-scale legalization have announced their support for a bill to allow health-care practitioners to prescribe the drug to patients with cancer and certain other serious conditions.
With firm support in the Democratic-led Assembly, the bill could become one of the few pieces of major legislation to reach the governor’s desk without his direct involvement, and may supplant Mr. Cuomo’s own efforts in this area.
These senators and others say Mr. Cuomo’s plan—which would introduce a pilot program for medicinal pot to be distributed in 20 hospitals around the state—doesn’t go far enough to help very sick people.
But, they said, the governor’s openness to the medicinal use of the drug, even in a limited capacity, ultimately changed minds.
“It caught people’s attention,” said state Sen. Diane Savino, a Staten Island Democrat sponsoring the legalization bill, known as the Compassionate Care Act. Senators began thinking, she said, “maybe I can do this.”
If either plan moves forward, New York would join 20 other states in legalizing medical marijuana in some way over the past two decades. In New York, the Democratic-controlled Assembly has passed a version of the Compassionate Care Act four times in recent years, but it has been stalled in the state Senate, where Republicans share power with a breakaway faction of Democrats, including Ms. Savino.
Now, Ms. Savino said she has assembled 39 votes in the Senate, where bills need support from at least 32 senators. She said she is planning an aggressive campaign to advance the legislation, now that the state’s $138 billion budget has passed.
Her bill has received backing from several Republicans, starting with Buffalo-area Sen. Mark Grisanti, who said in February that “the positive benefits of medical marijuana are well-documented.” More recently, Sen. Tom O’Mara, a Republican from western New York, as well as several other Republicans, have backed the legislation.
Senate Majority Coalition Co-leader Dean Skelos, a Long Island Republican who has opposed medical marijuana, hasn’t committed to bringing the bill for a vote, but said in March the medicinal use of the drug is “something I want to look into.”
Mr. Cuomo hasn’t opined on Ms. Savino’s bill, and a spokesman declined to comment on it. But administration officials have said the governor is pursuing the pilot program precisely because previous efforts have failed on so many occasions. “I don’t believe there’s a legislative hunger to pass marijuana legislation this year, but that’s something we’ll have to see,” Mr. Cuomo said earlier this year.
His plan relies on an obscure 1980 law to set up a research program on medical marijuana, run by hospitals. It doesn’t require federal authorization, but since January, administration officials have been assembling a plan for approval by the Food and Drug Administration, whose imprimatur would help state institutions avoid the risk of losing Washington funding, as marijuana is illegal under federal law.
The proposal will detail which medical conditions could be considered for treatment, in what forms hospitals could dispense the drug and where the supply would come from, among other factors.
Ms. Savino’s plan has the backing of some medical-marijuana advocates, who say Mr. Cuomo’s plan is well-intentioned but misses the mark.
“The governor’s proposal as a research proposal is fine….But it’s not the same thing as a patient access system, and that’s not going to happen under the governor’s plan,” said
Gabriel Sayegh,
New York state director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which advocates for legalizing marijuana.
Both Mr. Cuomo and Ms. Savino’s plans have vocal opponents. Sen. Greg Ball, a Republican member of the Senate health committee, said he would support legalizing only non-smoking forms of marijuana. Otherwise, he said, “it’s a giveaway to the larger drug culture and is a nonstarter with most legislators who realize that smoking pot is not a medical solution.”
Sen. Timothy O’Brien, a Rochester-area Democrat who supports the current efforts to legalize medical pot, echoed those concerns, saying he wanted the legislation language changed “to look to delivery systems other than smoking as a preference.”
Ms. Savino said the legislation needs to be flexible enough to accommodate patients’ needs and doctors’ preferences. “We’re not giving a preference to anything,” she said. “We leave that decision to the patients themselves, depending on the conditions they have. There are patients who are going to use medical marijuana for whom smoking is the only option for them to get it immediately into their blood stream.”
Even if the Legislature passes full-scale legalization of medical pot, it might not render Mr. Cuomo’s proposal moot. Ms. Savino said she would still encourage the governor to pursue creating a research institute permitted by the law he is tapping for his program, a step that would allow New York to establish the first medical marijuana research center in the country.
Advocates said they were hopeful but also nervous. “All of the pieces are lined up,” said Mr. Sayegh, “but this is Albany, where even the most common-sense thing can get left on the cutting-room floor.”
Write to Erica Orden at erica.orden@wsj.com
Medical-Marijuana Debate on Front Burner in Albany
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