Medical Marijuana Bill Is Faced With Difficulties in New York Senate

by Ryan Smith, June 12, 2014

John DeFrancisco, NY Senate

A high-ranking state senator in New York has expressed that he has no plans to move the medical marijuana bill out of his committee, reports The Poughkeepsie Journal.

John DeFrancisco, the Senate Finance Committee chairman, claims that the bill being pushed in the legislature by Sen. Diane Savino has too many unanswered questions. He says, “The Savino bill will not come out of my committee, the Finance Committee. You don’t have any kind of reasonable research on the effects. You have people coming in here every day trying to ban e-cigarettes and use of tobacco in other ways.”

This is unfortunate, as there is a mountain of evidence showing that marijuana is effective in treating a number of conditions. Back in 1988, one of the DEA’s own administrative law judges called marijuana “one of the safest therapeutic active substances known to man.”

DeFrancisco’s opposition to the bill is now leading to uncertainty over whether or not the bill will make it to Cuomo’s desk before the end of the year. Though the bill could bypass DeFrancisco’s committee, it would then be sent to the Rules Committee; however, the Senate Republican leader in charge, Sen. Dean Skelos, has also expressed his reservations about allowing a vote that would allow the smoking of marijuana.

On the bright side, DeFrancisco has said that he may be convinced to vote for a bill that would allow for marijuana to be taken in other forms besides smoking it, such as oil, especially in cases of children with epilepsy and other debilitating diseases.

Article republished from Marijuana Policy Project