By Steve Levy
Only in New York can politicians lose money by legalizing drugs.
It seems like it’s been years ago that New York’s crazy leftist politicians made the brilliant decision to reserve marijuana shop licenses solely for individuals who were convicted of marijuana-related offenses in the past.
You heard that correctly. If you’ve been a law-abiding citizen all your life, you cannot get a license to open a marijuana dispensary. But if you were convicted of a marijuana crime, you can.
Not only was the concept immoral from the start, but the twisted virtue-signaling policies of New York’s leftist politicians created administrative chaos for bureaucrats, who were trying to determine who qualified to open these marijuana shops. The bureaucrats have been mired in delving through background checks for years now, while other states have been open for business collecting tax revenue.
We see both the pros and cons to the legalization issue and certainly don’t want to return to the old days when people using recreational marijuana would have the book thrown at them.
But it makes you scratch your head and wonder how incompetent our elected officials are that they can’t even get right something as simple as granting a license to a store owner.
But that’s what happens when you base all of your decisions through the prism of equity and race.
Steve Levy is president of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as a Suffolk County Executive, a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.”