On Wednesday afternoon, news broke that after eight years of unsuccessful attempts, Democrats in the New York State Legislature had reached a deal to legalize marijuana in the state. Multiple unnamed sources reported that following weeks of negotiations – both internally and with the Governor’s office – the Legislature has a bill with enough support to pass in both houses next week, and eventually be signed into law by Governor Cuomo. While the exact timeline for enactment remains unclear, it seems likely the drug will be legally available for purchase by adults in the state by some time in 2022.
New York joins fifteen other states that have already legalized recreational weed sales to adults, but is just the third state (after Illinois and Virginia) to legalize via state legislation – rather than by voter referendum.
Now that marijuana is likely to become a legal recreational product alongside alcohol, tobacco, and Whiskey River cheeseburgers, let’s take a look at how it might affect daily life in Peekskill.
To Weed or Not to Weed?
Note: specific details of the latest legalization proposal have not been made public. Information has been trickling out to the media from unnamed sources. The specifics in this piece are our best information as we go to press – and may well be updated in the bill’s final draft.
No one can say for sure if Peekskill will even host one or more pot shops (or dispensaries as they’re commonly referred to in the US), but it seems more likely than not. One of the many contentious conditions that slowed negotiations this year was whether local municipalities would have the power to ban dispensaries from within their borders. Governor Cuomo favored granting cities and counties of over 100,000 residents that right. If the Senate’s 2021 MRTA language survived the most recent negotiations, all municipalities will be able to pass “opt-out” laws – but those laws will be subject to voter referendum, giving residents the effective ability to veto them.
Short of a new law restricting or prohibiting them outright, the Common Council would have the ability to control the hours of operation and location of dispensaries or growing facilities, and “provided such ordinances or regulations do not make the operation of such licensed retail dispensaries unreasonably impracticable”, ie may only be open from 5 am to 7 am, or restricted to zoning districts with virtually no consumer traffic.

Will the Peekskill Common Council simply allow dispensaries in commercial districts like downtown? The advantages of hosting these businesses may well outweigh any downsides. The latest text of the State Senate’s 2021 bill proposes a 13% excise tax on all sales (in lieu of normal state and local sales taxes) – with 9% going to the state, and the remaining 4% to local municipalities; reportedly there’s an additional 1% for cities of 1 million or more residents, i.e. New York City. 

In any case, a significant amount of revenue would flow to Peekskill’s coffers from legal marijuana sales. From January to September 2020, the 80 dispensaries in Massachusetts sold a combined $539 million in legal cannabis products – despite being shut down for two months due to the COVID pandemic. That’s nearly $1 million per dispensary per month. At that rate, the Senate plan’s 4% to municipalities would mean just one Peekskill-based dispensary could generate as much as $460,000 in tax revenue annually for the city. That’s more than the city took in from all building permit revenues in 2020.
There’s an argument that allowing local recreational marijuana sales would encourage consumption among residents, or “attract a criminal element” to Peekskill. But a 2015 federal study estimated that nearly 10% of the state’s adults already use marijuana regularly. For comparison, around 14% of New York residents smoke tobacco cigarettes. According to the National Academy of Medicine, “There is little evidence that decriminalization of marijuana use necessarily leads to a substantial increase in marijuana use.” And among teenagers, legalization actually seems to reduce rates of usage, as the allure of the “forbidden fruit” effect shrinks, and availability shifts from unregulated street dealers to dispensaries where all buyers are asked for proof of age.
Asked for his thoughts on the possibility of legal cannabis sales in Peekskill, Police Chief Don Halmy responded “I have strong professional concerns over possible negative impacts from dispensaries and therefore urge serious caution by legislative bodies, both state and local, with regard to permitting recreational marijuana dispensaries. Having said this, police routinely must adjust our strategies based on changes in the law. I look forward to seeing new state policy as it becomes available and to helping the public and the city council make informed decisions on this and other public safety policy matters.”
How Soon Could Peekskill Be in the Legal Recreational Cannabis Business?
The Herald looked at the turnaround time from legalization to the first legal sales in all eleven states where legal recreational cannabis sales have actually begun (several other states such as New Jersey have legalized but not yet issued sales licenses; in Vermont and DC, it’s legal to possess but not sell recreational marijuana). 
In the first six years of legalization, beginning with Colorado in 2012, through Michigan in 2018, the time from enacting legislation legalizing sales – to the actual commencement of sales – was quite lengthy: averaging 580 days for those nine states. But some of the most recent states to go from legalized to actual sales have cut that time significantly.
Illinois signed a law permitting recreational weed sales to adults in July, 2019, and the first dispensary sales began in January, 2020 – just 160 days later. And Arizona went from voter approval on Election Day 2020, to product on store shelves in a record eighty days. Virginia – the latest to legalize in February – built in a nearly three-year moratorium before sales begin, but that’s unusual, and unlikely to happen here.
It’s inconceivable that New York – a heavily bureaucratic state – could put all the necessary pieces in place in just three months, it does seem possible that the Empire State will be ready to roll out the first legal joints by early to mid-2022. 

Investing in Communities Damaged by the War on Drugs
It’s impossible to say for sure whether Peekskill would attract one or more dispensaries. On one hand, the city is a relatively dense population center for northwest Westchester County. It’s also arguably one of the most diverse and liberal places in the Lower Hudson Valley. There’s plenty of available and relatively low-cost retail space in our downtown. And it seems at least some of our elected city officials would be supportive of the jobs, tax revenue, and tourists a dispensary would likely attract. 
On the other hand, Peekskill is only somewhere around the 100th largest city in the state – and there are dozens more towns with greater populations of prospective customers. But the Cannabis Control Board will have the power to distribute licenses with some geographic equity. And more importantly, the new agency will be tasked with assigning licenses to communities most negatively impacted by decades of disproportionate drug law enforcement. 
There aren’t many published statistics detailing arrests for specific offences by race in northern Westchester, but a 2018 report found that in Peekskill from 2013 to 2017, 44% of all low-level marijuana arrests were of Black individuals, whereas the overall Black population is just 20%. That imbalance gets worse in communities with smaller Black populations like Pelham, where only 12% of residents identify as Black – but Black people made up 100% of all low-level marijuana arrests in that time period. The study found that Latino communities in Westchester were also arrested at higher rates than their population at large in that period (though not in Peekskill). Both trends play out county-wide, with Black residents of Westchester County being arrested on marijuana possession charges at a rate 15 times higher than whites – despite studies showing both races use the drug at similar rates.
The text of the current MRTA Senate bill indicates the proposed Bureau of Marijuana Policy would give preference to “social and economic equity applicants”, including “individuals from communities disproportionately impacted by the enforcement of cannabis prohibition; minority-owned businesses; women-owned businesses; disadvantaged farmers; and service-disabled veterans”.
There’s dozens of other considerations, but the above criteria could help land one or more licenses in Peekskill, where low income and high diversity (relative to much of Westchester) means there’s a relatively large cohort of the populations targeted by the bill as beneficiaries. Other Westchester cities with similar demographics and relatively dense populations that seem likely destinations for dispensaries include Mount Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle, and White Plains.
 The proposed law includes a raft of other social justice initiatives including providing education and incubation services for first-time and small business owners; community reinvestment of tax dollars; and forgiveness and in some cases even expungement of previous low-level marijuana convictions.
Throughout negotiations, the Legislature’s plan has focused on beginning to repair the damage done by decades of imbalanced enforcement of marijuana laws, including a cycle of conviction and incarceration of Black males for low-level infractions, making it difficult to find legitimate future employment, often leading many to turn to long-term criminal behavior for survival.
 

The three “Progress4Peekskill” candidates who replied were all decidedly in favor of Peekskill hosting one or more dispensaries. “