NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — With New York on the verge of legalizing recreational marijuana, a local county executive is wondering about how the tax revenue should be spent.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie announced an agreement Saturday on legislation that would allow recreational marijuana sales to adults over the age of 21 and set up a licensing process for the delivery of cannabis products to customers.
Officials said the cannabis program is projected to bring in $350 million in taxes each year, as well as 30,000 to 60,000 new jobs to the state.
New York would set a 9% sales tax on cannabis, plus an additional 4% tax split between the county and local government.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer said legalizing marijuana will come with some "unintended consequences," including more underage consumption and changes with policing.
"Even with legalized products, things like alcohol or gambling, there are people that will overuse the legal product, prescription drugs, or they'll abuse that, so we have to make sure as a society working through, to some degree, the public sector that we address those issues, we anticipate it," Latimer said. "The county government has a responsibility here to protect us as well. We have to make sure we invest the money that we're going to make from this into those services that people are going to need."
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That includes addiction counseling, mental health and social services, which are all provided by the county.
"Those programs are going to be necessary," said Latimer, who wants to make sure the county gets enough tax revenue from legalization to deal with the demand for those services.
The new legislative agreement calls for only 25% of the tax reenues going to the county, with the rest going to the municipality.
"My mindset as a county official turns to how do we deal with the likelihood of things that will happen when you make a product like marijuana now legal and more likely being used by more people than before," Westchester County Executive George Latimer said. "You really want to target the money to the governments that are doing the work to deal with the addiction."
Latimer says the answer may be partnering up with those local governments.
For his part, he's starting a county task force to get a handle on the changes to come.
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