Long Island navigates the growing pains of legal marijuana

Two years after marijuana’s legalization in New York State, the drug's pungent smoke seems more common in Long Island public places.

For some, it is a welcome sign that sometimes unevenly enforced laws surrounding the consumption, sale and use of the drug have been relaxed. In the minds of health experts, it's those same loosened restrictions and what they mean for long-term health, especially among the young, that has them worried.

For others, who simply despise the often skunky smell of marijuana smoke, it means an unwanted and persistent annoyance.

“I smell it all the time,” said Katherine Stevko, a retired nurse practitioner from Bethpage. That includes the 8 a.m. walks she takes with her dog, and even when driving on the Long Island and Seaford-Oyster Bay expressways and the Southern State Parkway.

“I remember going to the doctor one morning, an early appointment, and somebody in front of me in a work truck” was smoking marijuana so heavily, Stevko said, she could smell the smoke from her car.

Commack resident Dave Shostack said he has come to expect the smell of weed, which he detests, in the parking lot of an area Walmart, as well as on the Grand Central Parkway in Queens.

“I don’t want to be walking around smelling that garbage, and I don’t want to pay an increase in my insurance" if people driving under the influence cause a crash, he said.

But it's increasingly part of life on Long Island, a legal and relatively mild way for those who partake to unwind or feel physically better, according to Nehal Vadhan, a Northwell Health psychologist who studies substance use.

There are “people who need to use medicinally, and even someone who uses recreationally, the way someone might have a couple beers or glasses of wine," Vadhan said. 

Legalizing weed to redress injustice

The law allows those 21 and older to possess up to 3 ounces of cannabis for personal use and to smoke it in most of the same places where lighting up a cigarette is allowed, motor vehicles excepted. 

It remains illegal to smoke or vape tobacco or marijuana in public parks, beaches and other recreational facilities, as well as on federal land and in private businesses.

Legalization was, in part, an effort to redress what the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, in a report this spring, called the “long-standing injustices and inequities created by the unequal enforcement of cannabis prohibition” that disproportionately affected the state’s Black and brown citizens.

But complaints over the smell of smoke from the drug suggest that, along with legalization's social justice aims, there are quality of life and health issues to be settled.

Comprehensive data about post-legalization marijuana use on Long Island and the rest of New York is not yet available, according to the state cannabis office.

In 2021, a state Department of Health survey found that an estimated 13.5% of Suffolk County residents 18 and older and 9.3% of Nassau residents had consumed cannabis in the past 30 days. Statewide, the rate stood at 13.7%.

A 2018 state assessment of the likely affects of legalization estimated 1.27 million New Yorkers were marijuana users. That assessment reported mixed and nuanced public health impacts of legalization, including possible reduction in opioid deaths and other therapeutic benefits, along with possible lung damage for smokers and negative effects on mental health for some regular users.

Marijuana effects on the young

Delaying use is important because the key phases of brain development take place before age 25, and marijuana use during that time can affect how young people learn, with long-term implications, said R. Lorraine Collins, a public health professor at the University at Buffalo. Marijuana use is highest among people in their late teens to early 20s, and that is “actually the worst time to disrupt the development of your brain,” Collins said.

For people who don't use marijuana but find themselves in proximity to those who do, health effects can depend on whether its indoors or not, experts have said, with more potential risks from inhaling inside.

According to UCLA Health, an academic health and research center in Southern California, secondhand marijuana smoke can result in failed drug tests, but only after an individual has been “exposed to high-level THC marijuana smoke for an hour in an unventilated room.”

THC is the acronym for tetrahydrocannabinol, the chemical in marijuana that causes mind-altering effects.

The social effects since legalization in New York are still evolving, said Vadhan, of Northwell Health.

Initially, public consumption probably “leads to a mild increase in stigma,” as people who have had little or no contact with the drug are confronted with its use. But over time, he said, legalization, as with any substance, likely will lead to greater acceptance and higher rates of use.

Marijuana's legalization, legitimacy

“It’s social learning theory,” Vadhan said. “Observing people in public doing it is one mechanism [through which] people acquire behavior or increase their own frequency.”

He predicted legalization would have little impact on people who were regular marijuana users already and said that in his own practice, Vadhan had encountered no patients whose substance use disorder resulted from legalization.

Besides, he added, social legitimacy for the drug is not necessarily a bad thing.

Others insist that the burden remains on marijuana users to be mindful of their use, and the way it can affect others.

In the view of Lori-Ann Novello, a social worker and executive director of Babylon Cares, a community organization aimed at stopping substance abuse, legalization changed smoking behavior in her town.

“I smell it when I’m driving, in the parking lot, near the supermarket,” she said. Yes, people smoked pot before legalization, Novello acknowledged, but “now it’s blatantly out in the open.”

Adults “are role models, and what we normalize can be adopted” by youth, she said. Her group works to delay marijuana use and advocates for enforcement of existing laws around use.

“The rules are in place,” Novello said. “We just have to hold each other accountable.”

Flouting law on smoking cannabis in public

At state parks and beaches on Long Island, smoking is prohibited in most areas, including boardwalks, pavilions and near buildings, but the law is sometimes flouted, officials said.

“We have seen an increase in visitors smoking cannabis in these restricted zones, as well as complaints from other visitors about the smell,” said Dan Keefe, a spokesman for the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Keefe did not provide 2023 statistics.

Southampton Parks director Kristen M. Doulos said that last fall, town employees put up more than 50 signs at beaches. The signs show images of a cigarette, a vape pen and a marijuana leaf indicating all are forbidden.

“Over the course of the years, you’d catch a scent here and there” of marijuana, but “usually those folks tend to stay out of the swimming areas,” Doulos said, adding that she tells her staffers to warn anyone smoking weed at town beaches that they’re violating town code. If that doesn’t resolve the situation, she said, “they can call for [law] enforcement.”

Hempstead officials usually give verbal warnings to anyone found smoking marijuana or vaping, “and most residents comply immediately,” town spokesman Casey Sammon said.

Summonses for vaping?

Babylon spokesman Ryan Bonner said the town had registered no complaints and issued no summonses in the last year for smoking in parks or beaches, but that officials would keep “a very close eye on it this summer."

Vaping, which uses an electronic device to heat marijuana without burning it, “is the one people think they can get away with,” Bonner said.

“The thinking is probably that it doesn’t smell as bad and they’re not going to get caught," but they will, he said. “If someone is smoking marijuana five feet away from you when your kids are trying to enjoy the beach, we’re going to send someone over there and they’re going to receive a summons.”

In East Farmingdale, Yuvraj Singh, 24, is preparing to open Strain Stars, a recreational dispensary, likely to be one of the first on Long Island aside from those on Shinnecock land.

Singh said he plans to carry vapes, which produce less of a smell, and gummies, which emit none at all.

He offered a simple rule of weed etiquette: When smoking marijuana, whatever the strain, “There will be an odor … Don’t smoke in public places with kids, don’t smoke where you’re not supposed to be smoking.”

With David Olson