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HERALD ALTH ur HEPoint Alsoyo serving Lookout & East Atlantic Beach body / mind / fitness
September 29, 2022
Fit Fest returns to Long Beach
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Page 3 VoL. 33 No. 40
Rabbi Zanerhaft on Yom Kippur
Your Health Wellness
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SEPTEMBER 29 - oCToBER 5, 2022
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‘Soaring to new heights’ for Hispanic Heritage By BRENDAN CARPENTER bcarpenter@liherald.com
Joe Abate/Herald
Flying kites, a fun activity for children and families, isn’t often associated with a meaningful event like a fundraiser. But in Long Beach last Saturday, kites meant much more than a good time on a sunny day. The Long Beach Latino Civic Association, teaming up with the city, held a kite festival on the beach at Magnolia Boulevard to commemorate Hispanic Heritage Month, which began Sept. 15. While no one was exactly sure of the timeline,
PEoPLE oF ALL ages grabbed kites of all colors and sent them aloft to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.
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City Council revisits pros, cons of state pot program By JAMES BERNSTEIN jbernstein@liherald.com
Since last December, when the Long Beach City Council voted unanimously to opt out of a New York state program to allow retail sales of marijuana, the issue has been dormant. Some even said dead. But the topic erupted publicly again at the latest council meeting, on Sept. 20, when a cannabis entrepreneur asked council members to hold another public hearing on the matter, and “ultimately opt in” to the state’s program. Beryl Solomon-Jackowitz, 42, of Long Beach, who owns an e-commerce business called Poplar, which sells a variety of hemp-based products, said she hoped to persuade the council to adopt the year-old state
law. It is now legal to consume cannabis in New York, and the first iteration of adult-use dispensaries will open throughout the state later this year. “Cannabis is already here,” Solomon-Jackowitz told the council. “It is legal to consume cannabis in New York.” She noted that, according to the state’s Office of Cannabis Management, up to 20 retail dispensaries are slated to open eventually on Long Island, in what is described as a “first round” of openings. And Long Beach, Solomon-Jackowitz contended, is losing a significant amount of money by not adopting the program. She said that an economic forecast projects that the city would realize over $6 million in tax reve-
nue from the sale of marijuana over the next five years. The forecast, she said, was conducted “by a team of experienced economists” who produced reports on the subject for Florida, Mississippi, and Puerto Rico. The team, Solomon-Jackowitz added, examined populations in different parts of those states, and found significant growth in revenue from the sale of cannabis over a period of several years. At the council meeting, her claim of $6 million in revenue was hotly disputed by Judy Vining, executive director of Long Beach Aware, an educational organization dedicated to preventing substance abuse among young people. Vining said that local municipalities would receive a fraction of 1 percent of the state’s $220 billion budget from the
retail sale of marijuana. She said she had attended a conference on marijuana in Colorado recently, and learned that for every dollar that state received in such revenue, it spent $4 on services such as police. “There will not be millions” of dollars for Long Beach, Vining said, adding that the city had enough issues with alcohol and drug abuse without having a pot dispensary. Solomon-Jackowitz said that a local dispensary would create local jobs and allow Long Beach “to take regulatory ownership of the who, when, where and how of its local cannabis market.” If the city never allows the sale of marijuana, she said, residents will purchase it elsewhere, including in Far Rockaway, Continued on page 4