Questions, smells linger on pot sales

The Town of Babylon’s collection of $1.16 million from cannabis sales in East Farmingdale comes as a promising dose of good fiscal news. The town is the first Long Island municipality to draw revenue from recreational dispensaries.

The way it works is that tax money from marijuana sales goes into the state’s Cannabis Revenue Fund. It is redistributed from a 4% "local tax" on pot. The county keeps a quarter of the revenue, while the rest goes to the appropriate municipality. On Tuesday, state officials said more than $500 million has flowed into that money pot since legal sales began in December 2022.

Two more cannabis stores are set to open in East Farmingdale, and there are more proposals before town officials. Appropriately, the town plans to use the revenue for a new chemical dependency treatment center in North Amityville.

It’s reassuring to see a positive result from the town’s acceptance of these legalized sales. For more than three years, the state’s program for setting up retail sales for recreational cannabis use has stumbled, sputtered and faced delays to the point where Gov. Kathy Hochul this year had to shake up the office in charge.

Beyond operational fixes, however, wider doubts linger about the social impacts of legalization in New York and elsewhere. By now a majority of Americans live in places where recreational marijuana is allowed for adults 21 and over. The problems reach beyond the growing smell of pot in public places.

Whether legal or not, this product has grown more potent over the years, affecting users more powerfully than it did decades ago. That highlights two big problems for this big experiment. For one, the illegal market was not instantly defeated by legalization and licensing. One estimate quoted by New York City officials in March was that there were still more than 1,400 unlicensed shops in the five boroughs despite crackdowns.

And there’s the question of whether the product is adequately controlled and regulated on the wholesale and retail levels. Assuring product "safety" is complicated. Broad areas of potential concern have been voiced about the plants carrying bacteria, yeast and mold, and about pesticides and other contaminants. Other questions involve the reliability of inspections, testing and enforcement.

Driving while high has been tricky for police to detect. If you drive under the influence of cannabis, you can be charged with a DUI. But unlike alcohol, there’s no breath test for marijuana, which stays in a person’s system long past the intoxication. Former city Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a longtime public health advocate, says New York lawmakers’ eager tax grab should always have been linked to skilled enforcement. He’s right.

Just because cannabis is legal doesn’t mean it’s good for all of society. For policymakers, that will sink in more and more as time goes by. The sooner we address all the new problems and risks, the better.