Fatal drug overdoses soared across New York state during the COVID-19 pandemic, as increased levels of fentanyl in the drug supply and decreased state funding for public health organizations made using drugs more dangerous than ever.

In Monroe County, home of Rochester, a new HIV cluster appeared last fall, possibly connected to unsafe needle sharing practices. In Erie County, home of Buffalo, fatal overdoses increased by 50 percent. Overdose deaths also rose significantly in New York City.

“We are in a moment of crisis,” said Jasmine Budnella, a drug policy expert at VOCAL-NY. “Every single district across the whole state of New York has seen that we are past the worst-case scenario on the overdose crisis.”

For much of 2020, the full scale of the problem was not even known, as both the state’s Department of Health and New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene were months late in releasing overdose data. After New York Focus reported on the scale of the overdose crisis and the shortage of data in February 2021, the state health department released data on overdose deaths through June 2020. In April, the city released data on overdose deaths through September 2020.

In response to this crisis, New York’s legislature passed a host of bills to expand access to drug treatment and promote drug-user health.

“These are really big steps forward in the overdose crisis.”

“It will help save a lot of lives,” Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal (D-Manhattan), a major advocate for drug policy reform, said of the legislative push. “It will spare people contracting illnesses like hepatitis C and HIV. These are really big steps forward in the overdose crisis.”

Four major victories made the 2021 legislative session, which ended on June 10, a banner year for harm reduction advocates from VOCAL-NY and other groups.

The legislature passed three bills to directly increase access to health care for people who use drugs or are recovering from addiction. One mandates that incarcerated people have access to medications for opioid use disorder, a second decriminalizes the possession of syringes, and the third removes barriers to Medicaid recipients accessing opioid addiction treatment.

A fourth bill mandates that any funds received from settlements with opioid manufacturers or distributors go directly to public health initiatives related to drug use, rather than into the state’s general fund.

Asia Betancourt, a leader in VOCAL-NY’s Users Union, said that the wins were a product of over a decade of protests, rallies, and meetings with legislators. “In the very beginning, everyone looked at us like we were crazy,” she said.

Expanding Access to Care

In January, New York Focus reported that thousands of New Yorkers had been arrested over the past decade for syringe possession, and that an exception in the law for syringe service program (SSP) participants is frequently ignored by police officers. Roberto Gonzalez, director of a Syracuse SSP, said that repealing the prohibition would lead to greater participation in the programs, which prevent disease transmissions, reduce overdoses and raise the odds that participants will access addiction treatment.

“More people would be up for … enrolling in the program, and getting the services that they need without fear, because they know that they won’t be charged for syringes. They know that they won’t be harassed,” he said.

And in March, New York Focus reported that people in jails and prisons across the state regularly experience forced opioid withdrawal immediately upon being incarcerated, due to the absence of evidence-based treatment in the large majority of facilities. “The level of MAT in prisons and jails is paltry and pitiful,” Rosenthal said at the time.

Not providing opioid use disorder medications to incarcerated people also increases the risk of fatal overdose upon release, since tolerance for opioids decreases when a person is forced to abstain. People recently released from incarceration have an overdose mortality rate at least 40 times higher than that of the general population.

The bill to provide substance use disorder treatment to incarcerated New Yorkers, modeled on similar programs pioneered by Rhode Island, is in part funded by $11 million out of the $32 million that New York received from the $573 million settlement of a multi-state lawsuit against McKinsey & Company for its role in boosting opioid sales.

Of the four bills, only the one creating the opioid settlement fund has been signed by Governor Cuomo so far.

Rosenthal, who sponsored the bill, applauded the use of the McKinsey settlement money for this purpose, but cautioned that additional and more sustainable funding would be required for the program’s long-term success.

“The amount of money we have for medication-assisted treatment in prisons and jails is good, but not sufficient. We need to establish a funding stream,” she said.

But of the four bills, only the one creating the opioid settlement fund has been signed by Governor Cuomo so far. He can delay the decision on whether to sign or veto the other three until the end of the year, if he wishes.

When a similar bill to remove barriers to addiction treatment for Medicaid recipients passed in 2019, Cuomo vetoed it, citing concerns that it would saddle the state’s Medicaid program with additional costs.

But state Senator Pete Harckham (D-Putnam), chair of the Senate Committee on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, said that the bill passed this year is different from the one passed in 2019, since it can be paid for with money from federal relief and opioid settlements. “The reason that he gave in past years was the cost. We now have significant new revenues that I think will more than cover those costs.”

Even so, advocates remain on guard. “We won [the bills] through the legislative session, and sadly, are going to have to run a campaign from now until the governor signs those bills,” Budnella said.

Gov. Cuomo’s office did not respond to a request for comment on whether he plans to sign the bills.  

“It’s not an urban, rural or suburban issue; it’s all of the above.”

One reason for this year’s success for harm reduction efforts in the legislature was the new Democratic supermajority in the state Senate. Freshman Democratic Senators Samra Brouk, Jeremy Cooney and Michelle Hinchey all flipped districts formerly held by Republicans in the 2020 election, creating a greater caucus of legislators sympathetic to rolling back the drug war.

“New members from Upstate New York were really important to this year’s session. Certain people who were holding those seats before were opposing [harm reduction] bills regardless of whether their districts were impacted,” Budnella said.

Senator Pete Harckham (D-Putnam) said that support from across the state helped move the bills through the legislature. “We’ve really been able to build consensus in the conference that this is something we need to focus on, because it’s not an urban, rural or suburban issue; it’s all of the above.”

An Opioid Settlement Fund

The legislature also worked to ensure that money obtained from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors would go directly to addressing the overdose crisis. On June 9, the legislature unanimously passed a bill mandating that all funds that the state obtained from such lawsuits would go into a designated “opioid settlement fund” exclusively dedicated to drug-use treatment and prevention.

While the McKinsey settlement was finalized several months before the bill was passed, it was also a preemptive step, with lawmakers especially eyeing a then-pending 2019 suit by the office of New York Attorney General Letitia James against major opioid manufacturers and distributors. Just a few weeks after the bill’s passage, on June 26, James announced that her office had reached a $230 million settlement with Johnson & Johnson, one of the defendants.

If the opioid settlement bill were enacted, the funds would be guaranteed to go directly to addressing the opioid-involved overdose crisis. But the bill still needed Gov. Cuomo’s signature, and advocates worried that Cuomo, known for keeping tight control over the state’s finances, might be resistant to relinquishing control over such significant funds.

“This governor often wants to be able to spend money the way he wants, and this legislation takes a little bit of that power away,” said Christine Khaikin, senior health policy attorney at the Legal Action Center, which advocated for the bill.

But James had a trick up her sleeve. Included in the settlement was a provision that conditioned $30 million of the settlement money on Gov. Cuomo signing the opioid settlement fund bill; if he refused to sign it, the state would lose out on a significant amount of revenue. He signed it on June 29, three days after James announced the settlement.

“The attorney general’s office has been hugely supportive of the [opioid settlement fund] legislation,” Khaikin said. “They may have felt that they needed to give a little extra push to get the legislation signed by the governor.”

On July 8, James announced that New York was also expected to receive at least $200 million from the resolution of a lawsuit against opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family. The money will be added to the coffers of the opioid settlement fund.

“A person with diabetes has to have their medication. Why can’t we look at buprenorphine in the same aspect?”

In next year’s legislative session, advocates hope to build on their victories from this year.

One campaign will be for the authorization of safe consumption sites (SCS), facilities found to reduce fatal overdose and disease transmission, where people can inject drugs under medical supervision. Rhode Island has just taken this step.

During the 2018 gubernatorial campaign, Gov. Cuomo indicated his support for a pilot program of such sites—but then ceased communication with advocates shortly after winning reelection, as New York Focus reported in March. 

Since then, the pilot program has been in limbo. But advocates hope to circumvent Cuomo by passing a bill, sponsored by Rosenthal and Senator Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), that would allow local health departments to unilaterally open SCS.

Another initiative is likely to be a push to decriminalize buprenorphine, an opioid use disorder medication that is currently illegal to possess without a prescription, Budnella said. Rivera and Rosenthal are also the lead sponsors of a bill to decriminalize its possession.

“I know people who have gotten caught with buprenorphine and been arrested or had the cops throw it out,” Betancourt, the Users Union leader, said. “A person with diabetes has to have their medication. Why can’t we look at [buprenorphine] in the same aspect?”

Photograph of the New York State Capitol by Matt H. Wade via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 3.0

The post New York’s Harm Reduction Victories in the 2021 Legislative Session appeared first on Filter.

In 2019, the local jail in Broome County, home of Binghamton, was one of several county jails in upstate New York to begin offering medication for opioid use disorder. Attention to the role that treatment in jails and prisons could play in reducing fatal overdoses after release had been growing across the country, and the decision seemed a promising sign that New York could become a national leader on the issue.

But nearly two years later, people currently and recently incarcerated in the Broome County jail say that access has been extremely limited. Drug policy advocates say the inconsistent access to medication demonstrates the need for a statewide mandate to provide incarcerated people with opioid addiction treatment, rather than a patchwork system dependent on the attitudes of local sheriffs and jail administrators.

He found himself strapped into a restraint chair, where he was forced to remain for 12 hours while experiencing opioid withdrawal.

In February 2021, John*, a 30-year-old resident of Broome County, was reincarcerated in the county jail for violating the conditions of his parole. For the previous four months, he had been taking Suboxone, a medication that helps minimize withdrawal symptoms for people with opioid use disorder.

“Suboxone made it so I could function and I wasn’t anxious and I didn’t want to use other drugs,” John recalled.

But upon being sent to Broome County jail, he said, he lost his access to the medication. He entered opioid withdrawal. He also experienced symptoms of psychosis, which he attributed to loss of access to medication keeping his depression and schizophrenia in check. He was taken to the medical unit, where he experienced a psychotic break, he said, and lost consciousness.

When he woke up, he said, he found himself strapped into a restraint chair, where he was forced to remain for 12 hours while experiencing opioid withdrawal. “They didn’t give me my meds. They didn’t give me nothing,” John said. “It felt horrible.”

About a week later, he said, the jail’s medical staff began giving John medication for his depression and schizophrenia. But they told him that he would not be given Suboxone because his urine had tested positive for marijuana, he said, despite the fact that marijuana use does not prevent successful Suboxone treatment.

John remains incarcerated and unable to access the treatment. “They said no and that’s the rules,” he said. “I am a lot more depressed. I’m coping with it. I have no choice.”

“We’ve had so many people contact us and say, ‘My son was on Suboxone and the jail stopped it.'”

Alexis Pleus, executive director of Truth Pharm, a Broome County-based organization that advocates for the welfare of people who use drugs, said she routinely hears stories like John’s.

“We’ve had so many people contact us and say, ‘My son was on Suboxone and the jail stopped it,’” Pleus said. “I haven’t had anyone tell me they had a good process of getting their needs there. It’s a farce. Or it’s extremely limited.”

John said that while he has heard of other incarcerated people in Broome County’s jail getting Suboxone, most get refused.

The jail claims that its medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD, sometimes known as medication assisted treatment, or MAT) program serves its intended population. “We have an active [MOUD] program in conjunction with the folks at UHS hospital, and we provide medically assisted treatment to the individuals who are indicated in need at the time of admission to the correctional facility,” said Broome County Major Mark Smolinsky, the administrator of the jail.

Jail administration did not respond to inquiries regarding the number of people the jail has approved for MOUD. Alan Wilmarth, the administrative director of behavioral health at UHS hospitals and the administrator of the MOUD program at Broome County’s jail, declined to be interviewed for this article.

Asked about reports of people who say the jail denied them Suboxone or other forms of MOUD, Smolinsky said that use of other drugs could be a reason to deny someone treatment. “Sometimes you could have a case where somebody is also taking maybe a number of other street drugs, whether it’s methamphetamines or K2 or some of the synthetic stuff like that, where it’s then unsafe to continue the Suboxone,” he said.

But one specialist in addiction medicine said that this policy does not accord with best practices for treating opioid use disorder.

“There isn’t really a circumstance or a street drug that is contraindicated with buprenorphine,” said Dr. Justine Waldman, an emergency medicine physician in Ithaca who has prescribed buprenorphine, the generic form of Suboxone, to hundreds of patients. “Every patient who has opioid use disorder should be on a form of medication for opioid use disorder.”

“It gets to the point where you don’t expect him to come out.”

In September 2020, Isaac*, a 25-year-old resident of Broome County, was sentenced to six months in the jail after being convicted of multiple counts of illegally possessing syringes, a misdemeanor offense. Prior to his imprisonment, he had been regularly injecting heroin and buying Suboxone off the street when heroin was unavailable.

As he was being admitted to the jail, Isaac warned staff that he would experience withdrawal. “I told them, ‘I’m going to be sick,’” he said. “They should have put me in medical.” He was not offered medical care and was instead placed in a quarantine cell due to COVID-19 precautions, he said.

Shortly thereafter, Isaac entered opioid withdrawal. “You just have to cry,” he said, describing the experience. “You can be how tough you want; it doesn’t matter. You will cry like a little baby because it hurts.”

Some corrections officers knew that he was going through withdrawal and would periodically check on him, but he was never given medical attention, he said, and was never told that MOUD was available. “I didn’t know that they help you with being sick in jail.”

In the six months that he was in jail, Isaac heard of just one person incarcerated there being approved for Suboxone treatment, he said.

Isaac was released from jail in mid-March. But he has been incarcerated several times, and his sister worries that without reliable access to medication, if he is sent back to the jail again, he could become its next fatality. “If he has to go back after doing drugs again, it gets to the point where you don’t expect him to come out,” she said. “I didn’t expect him to come out this time.”

Broome County’s jail has previously received attention for its poor medical conditions. As many as 11 people have died therein the past decade, and last April, the New York Post reported that incarcerated people were being forced to clean the medical unit where COVID-19 patients were being treated without being provided with proper PPE.

Sheriffs’ Power Creates Mixed Picture Statewide

Many other jails in New York, and the large majority of its prisons, have no MOUD program at all. But some of the programs that do exist in other jails—including in Albany County, Monroe County, and Onondaga County—have been highly effective, medical professionals and formerly incarcerated people said.

In Albany County Jail, “as soon as a person identifies that they have an opioid dependence, they are hooked into services,” said Stephanie Lao, the executive director of Catholic Charities AIDS services, which worked with Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple to implement the MOUDprogram. Since the program began in 2019, Lao has not heard of any cases where people who requested MOUD have not received it, she said.

Both recidivism and fatal overdoses among people released from Albany County Jail have significantly decreased since the program was instituted, data show. The recidivism rate of participants in the MOUD program stood at 13 percent in November 2019, far lower than the 40 percent overall rate. Lao said that she is not aware of any fatal overdoses occurring among program participants, even as fatal overdoses have risen in Albany overall.

No severe withdrawals have occurred in the Monroe County jail since the MOUD program was instituted in 2019, said Robert Lee.

In Monroe County, home of Rochester, Tee-Jay St. John was able to access MOUD while incarcerated in 2019. “I always had this notion that being in jail you would be treated like shit, but honestly, it was a beautiful experience,” St. John said about the program. “The sheriffs were trained properly, knew what we were going through, and they would show compassion.”

No severe withdrawals have occurred in the jail since the MOUD program was instituted in 2019, said Robert Lee, who works closely with incarcerated and recently incarcerated people in the county jail and at a Rochester halfway house.

These programs have succeeded because of the county sheriffs’ dedication to them, both Lao and Lee said. In Albany, Sheriff Apple “recognized the value [of MOUD] specifically around reducing overdoses,” Lao said. “When he made that decision, he told his staff to just make it happen.”

In Broome County, by contrast, Pleus said, Sheriff David Harder has not been committed to the success of the MOUD program. “He doesn’t provide any leadership or make sure that things work well,” she said. “He takes a real hands-off approach to his own jail.” Harder’s office declined to make him available for comment.

Protests against conditions at the Broome County jail. Photographs courtesy of Alexis Pleus.

State funds to expand incarcerated people’s access to MOUD could soon be made available. A measure in the Senate’s version of the budget, also supported by Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, would allot millions of dollars per year in grants to counties to expand MOUD in jails. The Senate’s version of the budget would also include passage of a currently-pending bill to mandate the provision of MOUD in all jails and prisons statewide. Whether these measures become law will depend on the outcome of negotiations between the legislature and the governor, as the April 1 deadline to enact New York’s 2021-2022 budget approaches.

“We are going to see sheriffs continue to use their power against vulnerable people.”

Advocates say that counties like Broome demonstrate the need for such a comprehensive statewide MOUD mandate, which would reduce the discretion of individual counties and sheriffs and guarantee treatment to all incarcerated people.

A state law mandating MOUD in all New York jails and prisons would create a clear legal standard under which incarcerated people would be entitled to MOUD, enabling them to sue jails and prisons if needed access is denied, said Jasmine Budnella, drug policy coordinator for grassroots lobbying organization VOCAL-NY.

“When you don’t have a law that is regulating county jails and sheriffs, then we are going to see sheriffs continue to use their power against vulnerable people,” Budnella said.  

*Names changed to protect sources’ privacy.

Top photograph courtesy of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier.

The post In Upstate New York, a Jail Keeps Blocking Access to Lifesaving OUD Meds appeared first on Filter.

Advocates say that the driver’s license provision, among others, is a significant step towards racial and economic justice, since the effects of license suspensions fall most heavily on people of color and people living in poverty.

“Reinstating driver’s licenses for tens of thousands of people is a huge win. We just can’t even measure the day-to-day impact this is going to have on so many low-income people,” State Representative Carol Ammons (D-Urbana), one of the bill’s main backers in the legislature, told Filter.

Mari Castaldi, director of policy and advocacy for the Chicago Jobs Council, which advocated for the legislation, highlighted the bill’s ability to promote access to jobs. “Many people were being locked out of economic opportunities because of a suspended license, which had nothing to do with a threat to public safety, and had everything to do with the fact that they were in poverty in the first place,” she said.

The bill “removes the Catch-22 where if people can’t drive, they can’t work, and if they can’t work, they can’t ever pay the debt,” Ammons told Filter.

Previously, people with five or more unpaid tickets issued by speed cameras could have their licenses suspended until payment. Failure to pay other traffic tickets could lead to licenses being placed on “hold,” meaning that they were ineligible for renewal until the tickets were paid.

Under the new law, both forms of suspension are eliminated, and the Illinois Secretary of State is directed to lift all suspensions no later than July 1. The law will give relief to more than 11,000 Illinoisans whose licenses are currently suspended, as well as over 300,000 whose licenses are on “hold.”

“I think it says a lot … that we went from just a few years ago having three states, to now we’re at 14 states.”

The change comes on top of a reform passed in January of last year, dubbed the “License to Work Act,” which banned the practice of suspending licenses for unpaid parking tickets and other non-moving violations. Castaldi said that the new law is an “extension” of the License to Work Act, to “include the other kinds of fines and fees related suspensions that we weren’t able to pass that first time around.”

The law will also have the effect of reducing police encounters among people who use drugs. Criminal justice advocate Katie Schaffer told Filter last month that driver’s license suspensions “put people at risk of further contact with the police system,” adding that, “Once you’ve been pulled over and they’ve found a suspended license, you’re at risk of having your car searched.”

In addition to building on the 2020 License to Work Act, the new law was also a product of the momentum generated by the protests for racial justice that swept the country in summer of 2020, Castaldi said. During Fall 2020, in response to the protests, the Illinois Black Legislative Caucus held dozens of hearings on four major bills to promote racial equity in criminal justice, in economic opportunity, in education and in health care. The provision to end suspensions was included as part of the criminal justice bill.

“Eliminating suspensions will clear a lot of barriers to employment that are disproportionately experienced by Black Illinoians, who are disproportionate recipients of driver’s license suspensions, because they are disproportionately ticketed in both parking and traffic violations,” Castaldi said.

Passing a law to end suspensions as part of a larger legislative package was “a little bit unique and in some ways unexpected,” said Priya Sarathy Jones, the national policy and campaigns director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center, which works to end driver’s license suspensions nationwide. “Folks have been working in this state for years trying to make this happen, so I think that the way it did happen this year was sort of quick and, as far as these things go, easy.”

Sarathy Jones said that the new law in Illinois is a continuation of the significant progress made in 2020 towards ending suspensions nationwide, noting that seven states passed legislation last year curtailing the practice. “I think it says a lot about the direction that we went from just a few years ago having three states, to now we’re at 14 states” that have ended suspensions, Sarathy Jones told Filter, noting that 11 additional states have pending bills on ending suspensions.

“More and more states are trying to deal with [suspensions], and we in just a few years could see the end of this if it continues to go this way.”

Photograph by Scott Davidson via Flickr/Creative Commons 2.0

The post Illinois the Latest State to End Driver’s License Suspensions That Fuel Inequality appeared first on Filter.

The question for New York, then, is no longer whether legalization should occur, but how it should occur.

One critical aspect of that question is what should be done with the revenues generated by the new industry. State legislative leaders and drug policy advocacy groups argue that any legalization bill must reinvest tax revenues from legal marijuana in communities that have borne the brunt of the drug war. The governor’s office is instead proposing a version of legalization that would give the executive wide-ranging discretion over the new revenues.

The “gold standard” for legalization, according to Melissa Moore, New York state director for the Drug Policy Alliance*, is the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act (MRTA), a bill that has been pending in the legislature since 2013.

The MRTA, sponsored by state Senator Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes (D-Buffalo) would specifically earmark half of marijuana tax revenues for reinvestment in communities harmed by the criminalization of marijuana; a quarter for new spending on public education; and a quarter for treatment and harm reduction services, which have been facing steep cuts during the pandemic.

“It is long past time for New York State to catch up with our neighbors and legalize, tax, and regulate adult-use marijuana,” Sen. Krueger told Filter. “Allowing adult personal use, with appropriate regulation and taxation, will end the heavily racialized enforcement that disproportionately impacts African American and Latino New Yorkers, locking them out of jobs, housing, and education, and feeding the prison pipeline.”

Gov. Cuomo has put forward a separate plan for legalization, however: the Cannabis Regulation and Taxation Act, which would give his office significant discretion over the revenues generated. Moore said that this discretion makes Krueger’s bill preferable to Cuomo’s.

“The governor’s proposal has included some of the language from the MRTA about what the community grants reinvestment fund could be used for, but it hasn’t actually had the lockbox guarantee around funds going to communities,” Moore said. “It’s said ‘funds can be used for these things,’ or ‘may be used for these things,’ or ‘any other purpose as determined by the director of budget,’ which renders everything that’s come before it void, basically.”

“As always, the devil is in the details,” Krueger said, noting the importance of ensuring that “sufficient resources are directed to those communities most directly impacted by the failed policies of the so-called ‘War on Drugs.’”

“One of the bright lines has always been having dedicated community reinvestment.”

Marijuana legalization models in other states have been criticized for shutting out people of color and others who have borne the brunt of the drug war out of the industry, while allowing windfalls to flow into the coffers of well-capitalized investors.

“One of the bright lines has always been having dedicated community reinvestment, and having a truly viable social equity program for people directly impacted [by marijuana criminalization] who want to participate in the industry,” Moore said.

The MRTA would offer priority in obtaining commercial marijuana licenses to individuals and communities adversely affected by criminalization in the past, and would create a small-business incubator program, including low- or zero-interest loans, for impacted people seeking to enter the legal market. Similar provisions in Cuomo’s bill are far more limited and smaller-scale.

Key Differences Around Criminalization

The two bills also differ on several matters of criminal law. While the MRTA has a provision that the odor of marijuana can’t be used as a basis to stop or search somebody, no similar provision exists in the Governor’s proposal.

“Odor of marijuana has kinda become the go-to reason for stopping and frisking people.”

Eli Northrup, a public defender, said that this difference is significant: “Stop and frisk was outlawed, but [odor of marijuana] has kinda become the go-to reason for stopping and frisking people,” he told Filter.

Though the governor’s proposal would legalize possession of marijuana, its odor could still be used as a reason to search a person if police claimed to believe that they had acquired it illegally, or were in possession of an illegal quantity. Under the MRTA, odor would not stand up in state court as a justification for such a search.

Peggy Hererra, a resident of Jamaica, Queens, said that the New York Police Department used odor of marijuana as a pretext to search her son Justin’s car in 2018. The officers didn’t find any marijuana but did find a pocket knife, leading to her son, who was on probation at the time, being remanded to jail for three weeks. The officers’ claim of smelling marijuana remained on his record even though none was found.

“I was mad because I know they use [marijuana] to criminalize our community,” Hererra told Filter. The population of Jamaica, Queens is 62 percent Black and 15 percent Hispanic, demographic groups disproportionately arrested on marijuana charges.

Northrup also noted last week that Cuomo’s plan would increase the penalty for selling marijuana to an individual aged between 18 and 21 from a misdemeanor to felony offense, punishable by up to 2.5 years’ incarceration. While sale of marijuana to a person under 21 would remain illegal under the MRTA, the criminal penalty would be a misdemeanor, not a felony. Extreme racial disparities in arrests for marijuana sales persist in New York.

A further difference between the MRTA and Cuomo’s plan relates to expungement of marijuana convictions from New Yorkers’ criminal records. The MRTA would automatically expunge marijuana convictions, but the governor’s proposal would require individuals to apply for expungement themselves, a byzantine process that New Yorkers often have difficulty navigating.

Governor Cuomo’s office did not respond to Filter’s request for comment.

Getting Through to the Legislature

Not all legislators are on board with legalization in either form. “I believe there is still insufficient research in the areas of health, safety and regulation to support the legalization of recreational marijuana” State Senator Patrick Gallivan (R-Erie), ranking member of the Senate Health Committee, told Filter. But with new supermajorities in both houses of the legislature, Democrats likely have the votes to pass legalization over Republican objections.

One obstacle to passage of the MRTA specifically, though, is that not all legislators who support legalization are aware of the differences between the MRTA and the Governor’s plan, said Jawanza Williams, director of organizing at VOCAL-NY.

“Most New Yorkers, most progressives in particular, want to see a bill that’s like the MRTA, but they have to be aware of it,” he told Filter. “They have to understand the distinctions between Governor Cuomo’s CRTA and our MRTA.”

To that end, Williams and other MRTA supporters and sponsors have been holding legislative briefings laying out the differences between the two bills, including one on January 15 that Williams estimated was attended by 70 legislators or their staffers.

“There’s been a lot of education about it,” said Northrup, who was at the briefing. “Hopefully it’s coming to a point where it’s no longer feasible to not act on this.”

“I haven’t signed on to Senator Krueger’s bill, but I am certainly learning towards doing so.”

Freshman Senator Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester) also attended that day. He included marijuana legalization as part of his campaign platform, and flipped his seat last November, defeating a Republican whose platform did not mention marijuana.

Sen. Cooney told Filter that he thinks that the MRTA is “an excellent starting point.”

“I haven’t signed on to Senator Krueger’s bill, but I am certainly learning towards doing so,” he said. He added that he hopes legalization will include provisions supporting marijuana businesses in disadvantaged communities, as well as support for farmers in rural areas surrounding his district who wish to grow marijuana.

“We have challenges with job creation in upstate New York, so with legalization of recreational marijuana, not only are we righting that wrong from a social justice standpoint, we are economically empowering populations who have not had access to good paying jobs,” he said. Rochester has the third highest poverty rate of any US metro area.

The MRTA’s supporters are planning an aggressive lobbying campaign, which will be virtual due to the pandemic. Williams said that dozens of organizers and hundreds of volunteers have already bombarded Cuomo with emails supporting the MRTA, and are planning to step up their efforts as the New York’s January-June legislative session gets into full swing.

“Legalizing marijuana needs to be about the community as a whole.”

When asked if the coalition supporting the MRTA might compromise on some of its demands to ensure speedly legalization, Williams reiterated the importance of using legalization as a way to address past harms of the drug war. Legalization, he said, must “create a pathway” for people punished for marijuana possession or sale to “be able to participate in this now above-ground legalized market.”

“Legalizing marijuana needs to be about the community as a whole,” he added. “We have a responsibility to people to not just forget about what happened.”

While New York will be far from the first state to legalize marijuana, Moore said that she hoped it could blaze a new trail. “Although New York is behind 15 other states in legalizing adult use, including such progressive luminaries as South Dakota and Montana, we still have the opportunity to actually set the national model and be leaders in terms of getting social equity and community reinvestment into our legalization program from the jump, which nowhere else has adequately done,” she said.

If and when New York does legalize, Peggy Hererra hopes to see her neighborhood benefit from it.

“I know that they use that all the time to build a case against our families. Now they’re trying to make money off of it, so I want to see what they’re going to do for our community,” she said. “Once it’s legalized, the communities that have been most harmed by the arrests, we should be the first ones to benefit from the revenue.”  

* DPA previously provided a restricted grant to The Influence Foundation, which operates Filter, to support a Drug War Journalism Diversity Fellowship.

Photograph by Plantlady223 via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 4.0

The post New York’s Two Marijuana Legalization Paths: Will Lawmakers Get It Right? appeared first on Filter.

“This bill is a huge win for tens of thousands of New Yorkers that are currently trapped in a cycle of punishment and poverty,” said Katie Adamides, the New York State director of the Fines and Fees Justice Center, which lobbied for the legislation as part of the Driven by Justice Coalition. “We’re allowing safe drivers to get back on the road, instead of creating a cycle of criminalization which we saw just ruining people’s lives unnecessarily.”

Under the Driver’s License Suspension Reform Act, drivers will no longer have their licenses suspended if they have unpaid traffic tickets. Instead, they will be offered repayment plans at 2 percent of their monthly income or $25 per month, whichever is greater. The act will also reinstate the licenses of those who have had licenses suspended for non-payment in the past. Licenses can still be suspended for missing traffic court hearings, but will be reinstated when the person enters into a payment plan.

“In transit deserts like where I live, that’s huge. It’s giving them a way out, and a way up.”

People whose licenses had been suspended “will have the opportunity to get back on the road and pay a plan that is related to their income and be able to get to their COVID drive-through test, and be able to get to their kids’ school, and be able to get to work,” Assemblymember Pamela Hunter (D-Syracuse), the lead sponsor of the legislation in the New York State Assembly, told Filter. “In transit deserts like where I live, that’s huge. It’s not shirking their responsibility. It’s giving them a way out, and a way up.”

From 2016 to 2018, New York suspended the licenses of nearly 1.7 million drivers. These suspensions most heavily targeted low-income communities and communities of color, as a  Driven by Justice Coalition report detailed. Suspensions often stem from multi-ticket stops, where drivers can rack up thousands of dollars of fines in a single encounter, much more than many people with low or even moderate incomes can afford to pay back at once.

Katie Schaffer, the director of organizing and advocacy at the Center For Community Alternatives, noted that the law will minimize police encounters, including for people who use drugs. “What this system does is put people at risk of further contact with the police system,” she told Filter. “Once you’ve been pulled over and they’ve found a suspended license, you’re at risk of having your car searched.”

Charles George Jones, an advocate with the Center For Community Alternatives, has had his license suspended since 2016. He began to accrue fines after being hit with a $250 ticket for not having his license plate light on during the daytime. In the course of this stop, the officer added a fine for failing to stop at a stop sign, at the time a $233 ticket.

After one stop during which he received nine tickets, “I get in the house and I just bust out crying, [saying] ‘I just don’t know what to do,’” Jones said.

“I ain’t even supposed to be riding a bike, but I gotta get her her medication.”

By the time his license was suspended, he had accrued fines of $4,500, which Jones said has now risen to at least $7,200 due to interest. Despite being disabled, Jones bikes to the nearest pharmacy in Mastic Beach, Suffolk County, to get medication for his fiancee.

“I ain’t even supposed to be riding a bike, but I gotta get her her medication,” Jones told Filter. He hopes to have his license reinstated under the new law.

In some regards, the bill was a compromise. The Driven By Justice Coalition had sought more gradual repayment plans, an end to suspensions for those who miss traffic court, and immediate implementation of the law. While parts of the law will go into effect next month, full implementation will take 180 days, meaning that some impacted people will not have their licenses restored until June.

Schaffer added that the law would provide particular relief to people who are dealing with substance use issues, and need to drive to access support or outpatient treatment. “For people who have substance use needs, that kind of life destabilization and inability to access services and support adds an additional layer of destabilizing force,” she said of license suspensions.

Multiple states have passed similar laws in the past several years, including liberal states such as California and Oregon, and conservative ones like Montana and Mississippi. Filter recently reported on Michigan’s expected adoption of such a reform.

“This is taking off across the country because it’s got bipartisan support,” from actors ranging from President-Elect Joe Biden to the conservative organization Right on Crime, Adamides said.

But even so, she added, New York’s bill “is just the first step. There’s much more advocacy work to be done.”

Photograph via Pixy.org

The post NY Restricts Driver’s License Suspensions That Criminalize Poverty appeared first on Filter.