Yorktown Republican assemblyman Steve Katz was a staunch opponent of medical marijuana, until he got busted for speeding with a baggie of weed in his car. Since then, he’s come around on the pot, voting to decriminalize small amounts of it and reversing his stance on medicinal use. In fact, he’s so committed to the issue that he skipped Andrew Cuomo’s State of the State address (during which the governor spoke about allowing medical marijuana in New York) to go on a trip to Colorado — and you know what goes on there.
The Journal-News reports that Katz was in Colorado to research the state’s newly legal marijuana industry. “Extrapolate that to New York, where we are so starving for revenue. It could be a real revenue generator for our state,” Katz, who claimed he did not buy any pot during his visit, told the paper. Speaking more generally about his change of heart, he recalled the biblical story of Paul, who started out persecuting Christians only to convert later on: “In no way am I like St. Paul, but if you look at history, you can see someone who has changed, and acted on those beliefs.” An arrest on the New York State Thruway isn’t quite an epiphany on the road to Damascus, but whatever works.
