The Prohibition Party of New York Response to Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2026 State of the State Address
January 22, 2026
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On January 13th, 2026, Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her annual State of the State address, laying forth her own understanding of the condition of the state, and her proposals for what she would like to see in the coming year. In the interest of advancing a productive discourse as to the condition and future of the state of New York, we put forward a response to Governor Hochul’s address; in which, we evaluate his statements and proposals, and counter by articulating our own vision and proposals for the state.
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In her address, Governor Hochul stated that “government can and must be a force for good”. That principle is correct. Government can and must be a force for good. It should act as a means for the people to protect their lives, rights, and vital wellbeing, and serve to enable the uplifting of humanity. Our state government should actually seek to live up to that principle. But, our state government under the leadership of Governor Hochul has not lived up to that principle in some important respects. Rather, her administration and figures in the state legislature have taken actions that go against this; that have gutted protections for the public and have served to enable those who seek to exploit and harm New Yorkers for their own selfish gain. While trying to profess high ideals, the details of her plan include proposals aimed at further harming the people of this state and moving further into regression.
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Governor Hochul seeks to continue to push forward regressive pro-alcohol policies that will harm the people of New York. Governor Hochul has pushed pro-alcohol policies, weakening restrictions on alcohol sales, giving special tax breaks to the alcohol industry, and using state agencies and taxpayer money to promote the growth of the alcohol industry. She fails to recognize that alcohol is a social and public health problem, which causes widespread illness, injury, and death for New Yorkers, that damages our economy and communities, and costs our state over 16 billion dollars a year in social, medical, and economic damages. She fails to recognize how deaths from alcohol induced deaths across the nation have surged over the years, in significant part due to states weakening restrictions on alcohol sales.
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Governor Hochul wants to go even further down the wrong path. She wants to gut the state’s Alcohol Beverage Control laws; removing important safeguards designed to limit the alcohol industry’s ability to harm communities. She wants to triple the number of liquor licenses and locations a single alcohol producer can have. She wants to expand alcohol sales into a variety of locations, including sports bars, cafes, airport lounges, hotels, and movie theaters. She wants to remove the separation between bars and dancing establishments. She wants to make New York the “Nation’s Hard Cider Capital”. She wants the state government to partner with the New York Cider Association, and use state agencies and taxpayer dollars to promote hard cider consumption and hard cider businesses.
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Governor Hochul has bought into a dangerous delusion that promoting the alcohol industry will somehow help grow the state’s economy. That is false. The alcohol industry does not help the economy; it harms it. It profits off its harmful products, while the costs of the damages caused are mostly passed onto the rest of society. Expanding the alcohol industry will only make our state sicker, poorer, and more highly taxed, and using the state government to help it fundamentally violates the ethical duties of government to protect the lives, rights, and vital wellbeing of its citizens.
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The lives of New Yorkers should not be sacrificed on a slaughter bench of greed. As such, the Prohibition Party of New York stands in opposition to Kathy Hochul’s regressive pro-alcohol agenda, will encourage all sensible New Yorkers to join in opposing it, and will encourage members of the state legislature to remember their duty to the people and reject her proposals.
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Governor Hochul is also seeking to continue to push regressive pro-drug policies for marijuana. Instead of recognizing the failure of legalization for recreational marijuana sales, Governor Hochul wants to use state agencies and taxpayer dollars to further promote the growth of the marijuana industry. She wants to use the state’s SUNY and CUNY college systems to help the marijuana industry. Such misguided policies would only serve to further damage public health and would misuse our public institutions to drag down the public in service of marijuana industry profit. This is yet another area in which Hochul goes against principles of good governance.
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In her address, Governor Hochul claimed to want to help protect consumers in New York. But she will not take action to protect New Yorkers from the sale of harmful and toxic products. And instead, she is actively working to harm New York consumers.
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Governor Hochul has provided some proposals for dealing with aspects of some drug-related public health problems. Governor Hochul has proposed increasing enforcement against the sale of illegal vape products, establishing a youth-led substance use prevention symposium, using the GRACE program to help support non-profits working to help prevent overdoses and help for those struggling with drug addiction, initiatives for expanding prevention and addiction treatment efforts for opioid abuse, and advancing policies to allow for integrated services that provide combined mental health and substance abuse treatment. These proposals could help with alleviating some aspects of these problems. Though, the positives that could come from these would be contradicted and overshadowed if her other pro-drug policies were to be advanced. Our state needs policies that are focused on recognizing alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs as a public health program; on advancing education, prevention, cessation, mental health, and addiction treatment, and increased restrictions aimed at progressively reducing the commercial availability of harmful substances.
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In this year’s address, we have seen Governor Hochul has again continued to remain silent on the anti-democratic changes to state ballot access that were made in 2020 under then-governor Cuomo. These changes were an act of electoral suppression; which have made it vastly harder for alternative parties and candidates to even have the chance to be on the ballot and have deprived voters of many of the options they once had on the ballot. In 2022, New York only had the two major party candidates on the ballot for the first time in several decades. In 2024, New York was the only state to have the two major party presidential candidates on the ballot. Even worse, in the 2024 elections, roughly one-third of state legislative districts had only one candidate on the ballot. That is disgraceful to the democratic heritage of our state and our state’s past legacy of being host to a variety of alternative parties in elections. Despite her past claims of wanting to restore trust and integrity in state government, Governor Hochul has not spoken up on the issue and has not taken action to help remedy the problem. These repressive ballot access laws are a blight upon the electoral system of our state. We should be establishing election laws that enhance the ability of voters to vote for the candidates of their choice, that allow for freer participation in the electoral process, and provide fairer ballot access standards for independent candidates and alternative parties.
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Governor Hochul devoted a significant portion of this year’s address talking about regulatory reform. She proposed making changes to the State Environmental Quality Review Act to seek to expedite environmental reviews for prioritized building and infrastructure projects (while maintaining broader environmental regulations) and establishing a standard timeline for completing environmental reviews for projects within two-years. Hochul also claims to want to advance regulatory changes more broadly in the name of efficiency and getting rid of what she terms to be “outdated and burdensome regulations”.
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Now, in general, it is good to review and update regulations to help ensure their efficiency and balance interests. But the effectiveness of this relies on sound analysis and judgement of those engaging in the review and amendment of regulations. We must be vigilant to ensure that updated regulations continue to serve their core functions for advancing public interests. To ensure that regulations that protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of New Yorkers are not gutted to make it easier for business interests to enrich themselves to the public’s detriment. Hochul’s description of Alcohol Beverage Control regulations as “out-of-date, Prohibition-era rules” exposes that she is, on some level, trying to use regulatory reform as a smokescreen for gutting public protections. As such, New Yorkers must be vigilant on the details of proposed regulatory reforms, to distinguish changes that would actually improve efficiency, versus changes that would be harmful to the public.
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Governor Hochul made a number of proposals in regards to education. These proposals included expanding towards universal pre-k education availability across the state, expanding school programs for two- and three-year-olds in New York City, expanding support for educating and training for early childhood educators, expanding efforts for recruiting, educating, and training future teachers to reduce teacher shortages in the state, and seeking to update math education practices, and expanding support for youth mental health efforts. These proposals could help to benefit general education in the state. There were also proposals for expanding programs to provide tuition free education at SUNY and CUNY schools for high demand fields, expanding the studies covered under those programs to include more fields such as logistics, air traffic control, and emergency management, having SUNY and CUNY schools expand the amount of internship and work experience opportunities for students, investments in expanding skills training programs, efforts to improve accessibility and support at SUNY and CUNY for disabled students, expanding support for programs to help disabled high school students transition to college, increasingly transparency requirements for student loan refinancing, and expanding methods of emergency aid to help students facing emergencies to be able to remain enrolled in college. These proposals could have some benefits for improving college affordability, accessibility, and workforce preparation.
Governor Hochul devoted part of her address to discussing criminal justice matters. As part of its, she made proposals including expanding crime analysis centers across the state, investing in updating state crime labs, and establishing more standard training for police academies. Those proposals may help to improve the quality and effectiveness of law enforcement. The Governor also proposed changing state law to remove a loophole that allows people with orders of protection against them to get out of it by not showing up to court hearings for extending the order and having the court order lapse. She also proposed reforming sexual assault evidence kit procedures to extend retention periods for survivors assaulted as children and ensure that evidence cannot be destroyed without a survivor’s consent; as well as increasing support for victim assistance programs. The governor also proposed expanding enforcement against wage theft. These proposals could help to improve the provision of justice and alleviate gaps in our legal system.
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The governor spent part of her address talking about matters of infrastructure, development, and energy. The governor proposed making investments in updating and expanding the state’s water infrastructure, expanding efforts to replace lead pipes, expanding support for county infrastructure programs, and supporting further development of flood protection infrastructure. These could help to improve aspects of the state’s infrastructure.
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The governor proposed expanding the caps on land banks in the state, expanding eligibility for downtown revitalization programs to include the centers of small towns and villages, and increasing oversight of local industrial development agencies. These proposals could have benefits for local economic development in the state.
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Governor Hochul noted successes in the growth of solar energy in the state and has proposed further efforts to promote the growth of solar energy. Advancing the development of solar energy could help to provide more energy for the state, with less environmental impact, and expand economic opportunities in our state.
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The governor proposed expanding support for state parks, expanding access to state parks for New Yorkers, increasing support for community centers, increasing support for food banks, and programs to help renovate food banks in the state. These could provide benefits and aid for local communities.
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Governor Hochul spent part of her address focusing on support for disabled New Yorkers. She made proposals, including expanding support for New York children born deaf, deafblind, or hard of hearing, efforts to make state parks more accessible, efforts to make SUNY and CUNY colleges more accessible for disabled students, and efforts to expand the availability of ASL translation. These efforts could help to expand inclusivity and opportunity for disabled New Yorkers.
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Governor Hochul has proposed expanding enforcement against youths participating in online sports betting. It would be good to improve enforcement and better protect youth from falling into gambling. Though the rising problem of gambling in the state has been facilitated by increasingly weak restrictions on gambling and the expansion of gambling outlets. Greater steps will need to be taken to seriously address the overall negative effects of the gambling industry in our state.
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Having responded to the governor’s statements, let us turn to our own vision and proposals.
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The Prohibition Party of New York puts forward a vision of good government, based in moral principle, ethical public service, and advancing the public wellbeing. To this end, we put forward the following proposals.
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We must work to address alcohol and other drugs as the social and public health problems that they are. We should work to end any and all state support for the alcohol industry and other such harmful industries. That includes prohibiting state agencies from being used to support the alcohol industry or its products, eliminating all special tax cuts that were given to the alcohol industry, prohibiting state money from being used to support any alcohol manufacturing or selling business (save for support in helping them to transition into alcohol-free businesses), and restrengthen state restrictions on the alcohol industry.
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We should adopt a comprehensive approach to address the harm of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. This includes developing and expanding education programs, to educate the public on the harms of alcohol and other drugs, spread awareness of the benefits of teetotalism, and help prevent people from using alcohol and other drugs in the first place. It includes expanding addiction treatment programs to help those seeking to overcome addiction, as well as developing and expanding cessation programs to help users in general who are seeking help to quit alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. It involves working to expand supports that help to deal with problems that exacerbate and/or are exacerbated by the use of alcohol and other drugs. Such as working to improve mental healthcare. It also involves addressing the commercial aspect of this problem. We should work to enact policies that will progressively increase restrictions on the sale of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. We should enact policies that will work to transition communities and businesses away from the sale of intoxicants and towards products and services that do not harm public health. We should work to build a culture of sobriety and work towards dismantling the alcohol, tobacco, and other recreational drug industries. By embracing a comprehensive approach, our state could make great progress.
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New York should stand for the principles of democracy and free participation in our elections. We urge the state legislature to repeal the anti-democratic changes to state ballot access laws passed in 2020, so that we may help to heal the damage done to our electoral system. And even after those damages are fixed, we must continue to move towards further progress. Our state should move in the direction of establishing fair ballot access rules, which would better allow for New Yorkers of all affiliations to participate in the electoral process and vote for the candidates of their choice.
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In order for our state to progress, we must work to further advance the principles of equality, justice, and the protection of public wellbeing in our society. We should work to enact stronger state ethics laws and increase anticorruption efforts. We should improve transparency and accountability within our state government. We should work to improve our system of law enforcement so that it may better provide equal justice for all New Yorkers. We should work to reform our state’s institutions to be more effective and better serve the public.
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Our state should work to take stronger actions to combat sexual predators. We should work towards abolishing the statute of limitations for rape and the sexual abuse of children. We should also enact policies to take stronger actions to combat and prevent sexual violence, domestic violence, and child abuse.
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Our state should adopt a sensible and holistic approach to economics. We should work to rebuild our economy in a sensible way, that deals with the challenges imposed by the pandemic and international inflation, meets the needs of New Yorkers, and that supports honest productive businesses. The state government should not fall into misguided efforts to support greedy companies at the expense of the public wellbeing or promote social ills in the name of revenue, as they have done in the past, and continuing to do in the present. Rather the state should pursue opportunities for positive economic growth. We should look to ensure that economic development efforts are well thought out, that economic development efforts are connected to efforts develop infrastructure, education, healthy public spaces, and solid public services, and that economic development help improve the opportunities and prosperity available to New Yorkers. We should look to help build up and strengthen communities throughout the state. Especially the communities that have been underserved and neglected by state government policies in past decades.
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We should take further actions to protect the environment and advance renewable energy. So that New Yorkers can live and prosper in a healthier environment for generations to come.
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We should work to expand opportunities and improve services for those in the state for disabled New Yorkers. So that we may better advance equality and the ability of New Yorkers to live fulfilling lives.
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We should reform our education system to improve the quality of education and ensure adequate funding for all schools. We should work restrengthen the teaching of key subjects in schools, advance informational literacy, promote intellectual and ethical development, promote critical thinking, and foster civic engagement. We should further expand TAP and other financial aid efforts, and work towards a system where all New Yorkers have a reasonable opportunity to a debt-free education at any of the state’s public and non-profit independent colleges, universities, and vocational schools.
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We welcome those who wish to help build a better future for New York to join us in our effort to seek positive reforms for our state, and to stand for moral principle, public wellbeing, and progress, against the regressive forces of greed and permissivism, who seek to drag down our state for their own selfish gain. As William Jennings Bryan had said, “The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error.” As John St. John said, “Some people say our party, that it has not got money nor uniforms nor 80,000 torchbearers. Very True. But we are lighting a torch that will burn forever.”
Today, we may not have a large army of torchbearers, but we will light a torch that will burn on as we come together and march towards our destination. We welcome sensible New Yorkers, who care about good governance and the wellbeing of their communities, to join us. Let us work to build a better future for the people of New York State.
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