Tag Archives: David G. Evans

New York Citizens Sue State over Financing of Pot Shops

A group of New York taxpayers, along with two supporting organizations, filed a lawsuit in the New York Albany County Supreme Court on July 29, 2024.

The Cannabis Impact Prevention Coalition and Cannabis Industry Victims Seeking Justice are the primary plaintiffs.   They list the state cannabis agencies and the state tax commissioner as defendants. The suit is called CIPC, et. al. v. New York State Cannabis Control Board, et. al. Index No. 907269-24.  

The lawsuit claims that the defendants would unlawfully use state funds to finance state marihuana/cannabis retail stores.  (The marijuana industry calls pot stores “dispensaries,” and the lawsuit follows this misleading word.) The defendants are using tax funds to pay for the administration and capitalization of these stores. Low and zero-interest loans will be given to certain licensees chosen by the state.

The tax funds will assist with the manufacture, distribution, and/or sale of federally illegal drugs.

Beset by problems from the start, many lawsuits against the New York program have come and gone.  Much of the bickering came from those not favored by the state.  Disabled veterans complained that ex-convicts were given preference over them.  Most recently, Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul claim success for shutting down 1,000 illegal pot shops.

The New York Cannabis Control Board

The Defendants’ program identifies locations for retail marihuana/cannabis stores and negotiates and signs leases for those locations and designs, renovates, and furnishes ready-to-operate facilities, and pays design/build teams to provide these services to enhance the licensees’ ability to successfully conduct a marihuana trafficking business.

How Expensive is it?

The program will spend as much as $200,000,000 out of which initially will be $50,000,000 in tax funds. The defendants will use these funds to enter into leases, subleases or other arrangements and will furnish construction and construction management services for qualified dispensaries and servicing non-recourse loans.

As a result of spending state funds, participating licensees would receive a turn-key cannabis dispensary in a retail location.  Licensees would be obligated to repay the investment over time, but the costs to them would be minimal.

“We are not aware of any business or industry receiving this kind of preferential state funding, especially one that sells addiction for profit.” stated David G. Evans, spokesperson for Cannabis Industry Victims Seeking Justice. “The cannabis of today is very high in potency and causes mental illness, addiction and a host of other social and medical conditions. Many young people are becoming mentally ill from high potency marihuana/cannabis,” noted Evans.

The Plaintiffs’ Claims


The plaintiffs, New York taxpayers, claim the defendants, by financing and money laundering, engage in a federally illegal activity involving financing and money laundering. These actions imperil public interests by conflicting with and violating federal law.  They usurp powers not granted under the United States Constitution.

Plaintiffs have specifically identified wrongful expenditures and continuing wrongful expenditures of State funds by Defendants to bring them within the New York State Finance Law 123-b

Evans further claimed that: “If any landlords are thinking about renting properties to these stores they had better think twice because they are subject to prosecution. It is unlawful to knowingly open, lease, rent, maintain, or use property for the manufacturing, storing, or distribution of controlled substances such as marihuana under 21 U.S.C. 856. This may also violate landlords’ loan agreements with banks. In addition, income from these stores including employee salaries may be subject to federal money laundering laws.”

The plaintiffs are seeking a permanent injunction.   They stand on good ground since the Department of Justice reiterated the fact that cannabis users may not own g

Poppot took the above photo from a seller in New York, probably illegal.  The illegal market, despite efforts to shut it down, is much bigger than the legal market.

 

COVID-19 + Pot: Lung Issues, Suppression of Immune System, ER Problems

By David G. Evans, Esq

Hundreds of businesses in cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.  However, “medical” marijuana stores remain open as officials revise public health orders to include cannabis as an essential medicine.

Who is Vulnerable to Coronavirus (COVID-19)?

Is keeping marijuana stores open a good policy? The science shows that it is not.

The Centers for Disease Control states that the people at high risk of getting very sick or dying Continue reading COVID-19 + Pot: Lung Issues, Suppression of Immune System, ER Problems

The Truth About Prisons & Marijuana

by David Evans   I worked in the New Jersey criminal justice system for years, setting up programs for addicts and alcoholics.    Prison programs for addiction do not work as well as programs outside prison. There’s too much game playing to get out sooner.  Instead, we set up a program so that inmates would be released and had their parole date but had to spend the last month or so in a residential treatment program.  It worked better.   You never know what will work with somebody.

Drug legalization advocates claim that prisons are overflowing with people convicted for only simple possession of marijuana.  This claim is aggressively pushed by groups seeking to relax or abolish marijuana laws. Continue reading The Truth About Prisons & Marijuana

Marijuana Puts Education, Kids Futures at Risk

Heather Mizeur naively campaigned for the governorship of Maryland by supporting universal pre-Kindergarten and paying for it by legalizing marijuana.  Her support came from NORML and the marijuana industry.

What good does earlier education do for child welfare when you introduce a whole set of new problems?

Look at what is going on in Colorado and Washington, and the unusual types of child endangerment that have gone on with legalization.   Many very young children have gotten into marijuana edibles which look like cookies and candy.

“Encouraging marijuana commercialism and consumption to fund and support education are two inconsistent goals,” explained Diane Carlson, a co-founder of Bravetracks, a non-profit devoted to encouraging youth activity, employment and engagement in Colorado.  “Even before Coloradans voted in 2012 to legalize marijuana, Denver, where marijuana was first commercialized, had some of the highest youth use rates in the nation,” she said.

“The THC content of marijuana is extremely potent with levels reaching 20% and above in Colorado, due to competition in the industry.  Highly potent pot has become incredibly commercialized here and yet our kids have been told it’s benign. Increased access and use is a huge issue for Colorado teens who have no idea how such highly potent products can impact their health and their futures,” according to Carlson.

Since legalization, the pot problem only seems to be getting worse. “Disturbingly, Colorado kids will suck on lollipops, chew on gummy bears, or munch on granola bars without anyone knowing highly potent marijuana is being consumed. They have ‘vaped’ on pens, asthma inhalers or highlighters loaded with a concentrated form of THC that can go undetected in class.”

One high-school teacher in Denver, who wishes to remain anonymous, exclaimed, “Our job is so difficult and there are so many challenges to educating kids well in the best circumstances.  She added, “So why did the state add this other layer of challenge to our jobs and make it harder for our students to achieve success?”

Marijuana Money

“Where Commerce Meets Revolution” is how the Marijuana Policy Project (MMP) describes the Cannabis Business Summit held yesterday and today in Denver.  This title leaves no doubt that the MMP and other pot advocacy groups are about the money.

Amendment 64 passed in Colorado despite warnings of the teachers’ union and a persuasive letter from teacher Christina Blair to the Huffington Post.  It is probably because big money paid for the win in Colorado, with most of that money coming from the industry’s out-of-state lobbying groups.

One year later, by December 2013,  school administrators and law enforcement noticed the changes that came into the schools.  Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper has warned the governors of other states not to follow Colorado’s example.

Revolutionary ideas grab attention, but Heather Mizeur didn’t win her primary.  She only promoted an idea which was heard all over the nation’s capital region.

Most likely the children who heard Mizeur’s TV commercials about marijuana will end up believing marijuana is completely harmless and could indeed be tied to education.

The pot industry regularly promotes it as a way to fund education.   It is an ironic that they would suggest a solution that only makes a problem worse.

Beware that many local candidates and representatives in Congress are taking money from the marijuana industry.   We need to watch out for the fallout from this “green rush.”  It could be worse than the mess left by the mortgage industry.

Marijuana and Teens

With the push to legalize and expansion of medical marijuana, children and teens have gained an erroneous perception that pot is harmless, studies show.  Surveys of teens indicate use would definitely go up, if marijuana is legalized.

According to David G. Evans, executive director of the Drug Free Schools Coalition,  “Studies indicate that usage will increase to levels near between those of tobacco and alcohol users.”   The annual survey show that all teen marijuana use, and daily marijuana use, have consistently gone up over the last five years.  As a nation and for our individual children, we need to be concerned.

There is a connection to regular marijuana usage, gaps in college education and dropping out of high school, which often hinders future success.  “Chronic/heavy marijuana users are twice as likely to experience gaps in college enrollment as minimal users, ” according to  Dr. Robert DuPont, Director of the Institute for Behavior and Health,  in Rockville, MD.

Marijuana use in the young often creates a-motivational syndrome and apathy, in addition to and apart from the affects of addiction.  It is not a way of saying “yes to life, yes to love, yes to opportunity and yes to education,” as recommended by the Pope Francis in a recent address at the International Drug Enforcement Conference in Rome.

Dr. DuPont and Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman, chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University, wrote an article to suggest that changing policy necessitates a large, multi-year study using technology that has developed over the past 2 decades.  The study would aim to understand more about the effects of marijuana on the adolescent brain.  Researchers at Northwestern University recently published their studies indicating the changes on specific parts of the brain, and the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) has written about some of those findings.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry gives  a warning about  marijuana and young minds:  “Marijuana’s deleterious effects on adolescent brain development, cognition, and social functioning may have immediate and long-term implications, including increased risk of motor vehicle accidents, sexual victimization, academic failure, lasting decline in intelligence measures, psychopathology, addiction, and psychosocial and occupational impairment.”