It seems like every elected official in New York is seeing green. In announcing his top priorities for the spring this week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared that the state should “legalize the adult use of recreational marijuana once and for all.”

While this commitment is crucial, it’s beginning to feel like the conversation is excluding the people who have been hurt the most by our state’s unfair and racist drug policies: communities of color. We and our colleagues in the City Council’s Progressive Caucus think that needs to change.

The Rockefeller drug laws, which created mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession, continue to have an impact. They caused dramatic increases in New York’s prison population and left generational scars as a result of policies that cut off families’ access to public assistance, housing, education and health benefits. Marijuana arrests in the state remain largely concentrated in New York City and its black and Latinx communities. Despite citywide efforts to reduce low-level marijuana arrests, blacks were arrested at eight times the rate of whites over the past three years. City Comptroller Scott Stringer’s report Addressing the Harms of Prohibition: What NYC Can do to Support an Equitable Cannabis Industry found that thousands of New Yorkers, overwhelmingly black and Latinx, continue to endure the financial and social costs of marijuana-related enforcement.

With legalization almost at hand, New York City has an opportunity to learn about cannabis-equity programs from localities that have charted this path, prioritizing communities most harmed by marijuana criminalization. We should follow states like Massachusetts which have established programs to engage people from these communities and ensure their inclusion in the legal cannabis industry. Oakland’s cannabis-equity program has helped black-owned cannabis businesses succeed against an increasingly corporatized marijuana landscape where less than 5% of cannabis businesses are owned or founded by black entrepreneurs.

Acknowledging its past as the epicenter of the racialized drug war, New York City should develop programs that empower people of color in the marijuana business, especially by creating and expanding opportunities for small business loans, robust job training, ongoing technical support, and benefits for potential entrepreneurs seeking employment in the industry, with strong provisions so those with prior convictions are not excluded.

At the state level, the Legislature and governor should immediately enact the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act. Sponsored by Sen. Liz Krueger and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal People-Stokes, the MRTA would, in addition to legalizing the recreational use of cannabis by adults, create a comprehensive regulatory system that invests in our communities. We in the City Council have introduced a resolution in support of the bill.

Besides decriminalizing marijuana, the law should create a process for resentencing and releasing incarcerated individuals convicted of low-level marijuana offenses, and seal past records for these arrests. Its regulatory system must also ensure that licensing to produce and distribute marijuana is inclusive and does not factor in applicants’ drug-related convictions. And the statute should direct revenue to communities hit hardest by prohibition: Half of tax revenue should go to a community grants reinvestment fund, 25% to public education and 25% to drug-treatment programs and opioid overdose education.

Most importantly, marijuana's tax revenues should be directed at repairing the harm wrought by its prohibition. In Colorado, $230 million of this money has funded school construction and programs for early literacy and behavioral health. With legalization projected to annually yield $336 million for the city and $436 million for the state, the harm caused to black and Latinx communities could be addressed by funding job training, economic empowerment, youth development, community centers, re-entry services for the formerly incarcerated, and other community-focused programming.

As the state seriously considers legalization after years of unjust enforcement and unfair consequences for communities of color, it would be a shame if they were once again left with the short end of the stick.

Alicka Ampry-Samuel, Carlina Rivera, Antonio Reynoso and Steve Levin are members of the Progressive Caucus of the New York City Council.