Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering state Office of Cannabis Management Policy Director John Kagia to permanently lead the department after recent leadership turmoil, Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes said. Kagia has led policy implementation and public health campaigns at the state agency since 2022, and has worked to develop the legal cannabis market in several states for over a decade.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that they\u2019re talking to John Kagia,\u201d Peoples-Stokes told City & State on Saturday during Albany\u2019s 55th annual legislative conference of the state Association of Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic & Asian legislators. Peoples-Stokes, a Buffalo Democrat, helped author and sponsored the original law that legalized recreational cannabis for New Yorkers over age 21. \u201cKagia, I think, is a great call,\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hochul started a search two months ago to appoint a new executive director to the state Office of Cannabis Management to replace former acting executive director Felicia A.B. Reid. The governor fired Reid in December after the state was forced to drop charges against cannabis processor and distributor Omnium Health \u2013 a company accused of a reverse licensing scheme and trafficking illegal cannabis products into the state.<\/p>\n
Susan Fillburn, OCM\u2019s acting executive director, declined to comment on the governor\u2019s selection process at a cannabis event earlier Saturday. Hochul\u2019s office and the Office of Cannabis Management did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul is considering state Office of Cannabis Management Policy Director John Kagia to permanently lead the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133741,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8979,9,11,10,49,51,50,2327],"class_list":{"0":"post-133740","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-cannabis","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-headlines","11":"tag-new-york-news","12":"tag-new-york-state","13":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-state-news","15":"tag-news-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}