A new law allowing New Yorkers over 21 to smoke pot in public also includes language requiring that injured workers using medical cannabis receive the same protections afforded other workers using prescription drugs.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday signed S. 854, by Sen. Liz Krueger, D-Manhattan. The bill removes cannabis from the list of controlled substances, allows it to be used in public in any place where tobacco use is also allowed and expunges prior cannabis-related convictions.

The Senate voted 40-23 to pass the bill Tuesday, and the Assembly voted 100-49 to pass it the same day.

The bill also includes some provisions addressing medical cannabis, including use by injured workers.

“Employees who use medical cannabis shall be afforded the same rights, procedures and protections that are available and applicable to injured workers under the workers’ compensation law, or any rules or regulations promulgated thereunder, when such injured workers are prescribed medications that may prohibit, restrict or require the modification of the performance of their duties,” the law reads.

The 2014 law that first allowed the use of medical marijuana in the Empire State was silent on protections for injured workers. The Compassionate Use Act, however, included language saying it shall not be construed to require an insurer or health plan to provide coverage for cannabis.

Nonetheless, a New York appellate court in February affirmed a Workers’ Compensation Board decision ordering the comp insurer for the village of East Aurora to reimburse former police officer Daniel Quigley for marijuana he was using to treat chronic pain from two previous work injuries.

The New York Appellate Division’s 3rd Department said statutory language in the state’s Compassionate Care Act disavowing a responsibility of insurers to pay for cannabis applies only to public health law, insurance law and social services law.

“No reference is made in the text of the statute to an exemption from coverage under the workers’ compensation law,” the court said. “If the Legislature intended for said exemption to apply to workers’ compensation insurance carriers, it certainly could have included such language in the text of the statute; it chose not to.”

The Workers’ Compensation Board, in a 2017 decision finding a worker would have been eligible for reimbursement had his doctor secured a variance allowing the use of medical cannabis, said compelling payment is consistent with the liberal interpretation of the state’s workers’ compensation laws.

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