Lawmakers Say Effort to Legalize Marijuana in New York Is Dead

ALBANY – Efforts to legalize marijuana in New York died while most residents were asleep overnight following a failure by advocates to convince reluctant, fence-sitting senators that legalization would not harm public safety and health.

Sources involved in the negotiations, who privately distributed a fourth version of a marijuana legalization bill that was partially rewritten to try to build support in the Senate, said the efforts failed overnight.

The death of the measure became increasingly clear when those amendments failed to materialize by a midnight deadline last night; the bill’s backers said the amendments were going to be introduced by midnight in order to go through a legal aging process and be ready for a vote on Friday.

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