BUFFALO, N.Y. (WBEN) - State lawmakers continue to inch closer towards the legalization of recreational marijuana but they're not definitive about legislation coming by the end of the 2019 Albany session in June.
Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples Stokes said she hopes that lawmakers don't negotiate to the last second of the June 19 deadline.
"I've had a lot of very late night sessions," she told WBEN. "I've been in contact with the governor's negotiating team. I've been in constact with the senator's negotiating team and I've been in contact with our own negotiating team. We're pushing this even during our recess."
Much of the negotiations revolve around money. Peoples Stokes said that there are questions whether to use the money from marijuana for specific projects or to be placed in the state's general fund. Stokes said she'd prefer it to be used for projects like last week's announcement of video conferencing capabilities for inmates with their families.
"I can't move away from that because it's the right thing to do," she said.
Meanwhile, State Senator Tim Kennedy also said he's optimistic it will be legalized this year.
"Anything can happen," Kennedy said. "We're continuing to drive home the message of job creation and growth. At the end of the day, New York State shouldn't be falling behind other states and countries when it comes to progressive legislation that will help our economy grow."
Still, there are groups that continue to push back against marijuana legalization. Multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Erie County Sheriff's Office, are against legalizing the drug because of the dangers it presents for drivers.
The Erie County Sheriff's Office is also being proactive and were forced to retire five members of its K-9 unit who were in the prime of their careers.
"We have trained canines for narcotic detection and they are trained to alert on the scent of marijuana," Public Information Officer Scott Zylka explained. "If it becomes legal all those K-9's become obsolete because we can't untrain them on the scent of marijuana. Therefore, we'd have problems with search warrants, problems with probable cause, and that ripple would go right through the court system. It would get major cases thrown out because we might have found a little bag of weed along with ten pounds of fentanyl but it would get thrown out because of probable case with marijuana."
Purchasing the dogs cost the sheriff's department $50,000 total plus more costs associated with the six-month training.
"We've acquired four new dogs," Zylka added. "They're with their handlers now and doing obedience training and getting accustomed to the life of a law-enforcement working dog. What we're going to do is when they start scent detection training, we will not use marijuana as a training device."
Zylka also described the impact of marijuana's legalization on drug recognition experts. He said the department already has four DRE's in the area but local agencies may need to shift DWI officers to become a DRE.
"That's a long training," he said. "That's out of town training. We already have four and we're going to see if we need more because people continue drive impaired."
Colorado faced a similar problem when they legalized marijuana in 2012, with many dogs forced to retire and situations where searches were deemed illegal due to the presence of marijuana. The Denver Post reported that some organizations where pot remains banned such as schools, rehab facilities, or corrections departments, still need dogs trained for marijuana. A canine training expert there decided to stop training dogs to detect marijuana unless it was requested.