Framing April 20 not as a celebration of cannabis culture but as a public-health warning, Suffolk County officials, law enforcement leaders and addiction treatment providers gathered Monday at Wellbridge Addiction Treatment and Research in Calverton to sound the alarm about cannabis use disorder, cannabis-induced psychosis, youth access to THC products and drugged driving.
The event, hosted by Wellbridge, featured County Executive Ed Romaine, District Attorney Ray Tierney, Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr., Suffolk police Chief of Department William Doherty, Riverhead Town Supervisor Jerry Halpin and clinicians from Wellbridge and Outreach Development Corp.
Again and again, speakers returned to one central point: marijuana may be legal in New York, but driving while impaired by cannabis is not.
“There is no excuse for driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs,” Doherty said, noting that Suffolk police made more than 1,500 arrests last year for driving while intoxicated or impaired by drugs. He said 11 people were killed in crashes involving impaired driving in 2024, five were killed in 2025 and two people have died so far this year.
Tierney said his office has prosecuted cases involving fatal crashes, children sickened by THC-laced edibles and illegal sales to minors. He cited the 2023 death of Franklin Blake in Southampton, saying the driver who struck and killed him was high on cannabis and Xanax.
But while the public officials focused largely on impaired driving and enforcement, the most detailed warnings about cannabis itself came from the treatment providers and clinicians.
Dr. Edmond Hakimi, Wellbridge’s medical director, said the cannabis now commonly available is far more potent than marijuana used decades ago and argued that the rise in high-THC products has changed the risk profile dramatically.
“It’s not the same drug anymore,” Hakimi said, describing cannabis concentrates with THC levels far above those seen in plant marijuana in past decades.
Hakimi said Wellbridge is seeing patients admitted for treatment for cannabis use alone and said clinicians are increasingly concerned about psychiatric consequences, particularly among frequent users of high-potency products and among younger people whose brains are still developing.
He described patients arriving paranoid, hallucinating and, in some cases, losing touch with reality. He also warned that regular cannabis use can be especially risky for people with a personal or family history of mental illness.
Source: RiverheadLOCAL
