NY Post
They don’t want to pass grass.
A mob of some 100 angry residents angrily ripped plans for a pot shop in Islip Monday — and demanded that local leaders ban marijuana sales, which they fear will turn kids in the Long Island town into a bunch of doped out zombies.
Most speakers slammed the Town Board for even considering the proposal and argued the potential tax revenue — projected to be millions of dollars — is not worth the consequences of promoting what they described as a gateway drug.
“I’ve attended at least 10 funerals for young people lost to addiction, children that I watched start smoking marijuana in middle school and high school and went on to abuse harder drugs,” resident Corrine Winter said during the Town Hall.
“Youth marijuana use rises in communities with legal storefronts. Why? Because they lower risk perception,” Winter added.
She and others voiced concerns about the perception that teens will see dispensaries in their neighborhoods as legitimate businesses that send the message, “it is okay to do drugs.”
“If you vote to opt in, I hope you can sleep at night,” Debbie Cavanaugh, Vice President of the Central Islip school board told town leaders.
Cavanaugh reprimanded the board for “endangering” Islip’s youth and reminded them that they originally opted-out of allowing legal cannabis sales in 2021.
“It was the right decision then, and it is the right decision now,” she said.
A handful of speakers, however, pushed back against what they called “fearmongering” and “misinformation.”
“I want the same things everyone else wants, I don’t want our children to have access to cannabis products, and I want to make sure that illicit shops get shut down in our town,” said lifelong resident and President of the Long Island Cannabis Coalition, Gahrey Ovalle.
He urged the board to embrace legal dispensaries as a safe, regulated alternative to the thriving black market already selling to kids.
Legal dispensaries are not the enemy, they’re the solution,” Elizabeth Rosario, an Islip resident and cannabis lawyer, told the board.
She broke down the strict guidelines ensuring no legal cannabis would get in the hands of any minors, including ID scans at the door, security partnerships with law enforcement, and ensuring no dispensary would risk their license over selling to someone underage.
The projected tax revenue “is not an exaggeration” either, according to Rosario, who cited stores in the neighboring towns on each side of Islip raking in millions while they lose out.
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