Onondaga County Sheriff Eugene Conway stood in front of a crowd at the Nancy Cantor Warehouse on Friday, listing off his concerns over New York state legalizing recreational cannabis.

The bill was underdeveloped. Legalization could lead to a rise in impaired driving. The sheriff’s office had little time to prepare.

Still, he wouldn’t take a definitive stance on whether he would support the bill. He was trying to learn more about the subject on his own, he said, and wanted to hear more from professionals.

“It’s not a position of being totally against it,” Conway told reporters after he took questions from the audience. “It’s about a position of ramifications when it comes to public safety of what the legalization of marijuana could bring with it.”

Conway, along with several other county sheriffs across central New York, have spoken out or have remained skeptical of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s push to legalize recreational cannabis. Five county sheriffs in across central New York have said that legalization will negatively affect public safety, and that counties need more time to learn how to adjust to those possible ramifications.

“My job is to keep our citizens safe,” Saratoga County Sheriff Michael Zurlo said in an interview. “If this proposal passes, I think our citizens will be less safe.”

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Cuomo announced his “Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act” in January, which would legalize cannabis for people older than 21, seal cannabis offenses on criminal records and impose three taxes on cannabis sales. Cuomo dropped the proposal from his budget last week, but said the legislation could still be discussed outside of the budget, Newsday reported.

Cuomo said that legalization would create an estimated $300 million in tax revenue each year in his January “State of the State” address.

Conway said he believes that the bill will pass. But many sheriffs said they don’t have the time to prepare for the legalization of cannabis.

Sheriffs from Cortland, Saratoga, Cayuga and Chenango counties said they are searching or have already hired drug recognition experts who can quickly test whether a driver is under the influence of marijuana on the road. Unlike breathalyzer tests for alcohol, there’s no definitive way to test how much cannabis is in an individual’s system, multiple sheriffs said.

Cayuga County Sheriff Brian Schenck said legalization would require sheriff offices to train additional staff, put them through schooling and retrain part of their K-9 units.

“There’s a lot of things that we would have to prepare for as a law enforcement agency that we’re just not ready for,” Schenck said “And so that would impact not only our budget but staffing, we would need additional staff to do those kind of things.”

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Researchers who have studied the effects of cannabis on public safety also said in interviews that states considering legalization need to take steps to improve their research and data collection institutions.

Jack Reed, a statistical analyst at the Colorado Department of Public Safety, said that states considering legalization should examine their data collection tools to see what the state does or does not record. That way, states can have a baseline to accurately compare the effects of marijuana on public health before and after legalization.

Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at the libertarian think tank Reason Foundation, said more research needs to be done on the effects of marijuana legalization. He said there is not enough research surrounding how legalization affects impaired driving — one of the sheriffs’ main concerns — to draw a definitive response.

New York would be the 11th state to legalize the use of recreational cannabis if Cuomo’s push for legalization is successful. Many of the county sheriffs cited data from states that have legalized cannabis, such as Colorado, when expressing concerns about the impact of cannabis on impaired driving.

According to a report by the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, traffic deaths in Colorado when a driver was positive for cannabis grew from 55 deaths in 2013, when cannabis was legalized, to 125 deaths in 2016.

“That really concerns me,” Chenango County Sheriff Ernie Cutting said. “Those are real lives impacted.”

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Researchers who have studied the impact of cannabis on public safety also said that limitations and nuances in data reported on cannabis should be taken into account when talking about legalization.

Reed, for example, said there has not been complete reporting on driving impairment and cannabis usage until recently in Colorado.

Until 2016, data collected only accounted for the presence of cannabinoids, active or inactive, which does not give information about how recently cannabis was used or if there is actual impairment, Reed said. He said only recent data includes Delta-9 THC, which can be used to determine if a driver is intoxicated or not.

“Just from the data point of view, it can be nuanced.” Reed said. “It’s important to take those nuances into account when you’re talking about what’s happening in your state.”

D. Mark Anderson, an associate professor at Montana State University, has studied the effect of cannabis legalization on driving fatalities, teen use, suicide rates and workplace fatalities. He said that when deciding whether to legalize, states will ideally consider a whole range of costs and benefits. Anderson said that the research he has participated in has generally pointed to social welfare not being harmed, and sometimes even improved, in the wake of legalization.

But aside from debates over any potential dangers of legalization, Conway said that the legislation seems rushed.

Standing in front of county residents on Friday, he reiterated that point. He asked, what if the state passes it, and they discover more ramifications for public safety?

“I have an obligation to keep everybody safe in this community safe on the highways,” he said. “But I know my limitations with my resources.”

Published on March 24, 2019 at 10:48 pm

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