New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon is facing harsh criticisms from black leaders after suggesting marijuana could be a form of reparations for the black community.

The New York Daily News reported Nixon made the controversial comments during an interview with Forbes Magazine last Saturday (May 5).

“Now that cannabis is exploding as an industry, we have to make sure that those communities that have been harmed and devastated by marijuana arrests get the first shot at this industry," she said. "We (must) prioritize them in terms of licenses. It's a form of reparations."

Several leaders responded negatively to the comments.

“I'm for legalizing marijuana and I like Cynthia Nixon but putting pot shops in our communities is not reparations," Rev. Al Sharpton tweeted. "Health care, education!!"

Manhattan Democratic Party Chairman Keith Wright called the comments “ill-informed, lacks understanding of the greatest crime in history, and should cease and desist."

Black Lives Matter New York released a statement accusing her of stereotyping and asked for an apology.

"It does a disservice to our community for her to play into harmful stereotypes of African-Americans as drug users and dealers," the statement read in part. "And it does an even greater disservice to the enduring consequences of both slavery and Jim Crow and the inequities these systems of oppression perpetuated to claim that legalizing marijuana would somehow erase that experience."

Nixon has not issued an apology, but she responded to Sharpton’s tweet.

Great ideas, but classifying them as reparations is a stretch.  

Cynthia NixonMarijuana-LegalizationReparations