THE BAKED APPLE
Teachers, play-date moms city’s new potheads
They are the city’s new stoners — ganja-puffing teachers, execs, businessmen and parents who go about their daily routines under the influence, thanks to marijuana’s decriminalization.
“I started realizing a lot of my family smokes weed, and they’re all very successful adults,” said “Jake,” a 29-year-old TV writer in Midtown and small-business owner who regularly tokes up.
“So I was like, ‘Hey, maybe weed’s not too bad.’ I feel a lot more comfortable being a smoker now that it’s less enforced.”
In 2011, the NYPD busted 50,000 people for lighting up. By 2015, that number had dropped by 68 percent, to just 16,000.
Over that time, recreational pot use was legalized in eight states, and a law allowing the use of marijuana for medicinal pur- poses passed in New York.
Melissa, a 30-something downtown mom, said she’s even cool with lighting up on play dates.
“One time, [a friend and I] smoked and then let our 4year-olds paint my daughter’s play table with nontoxic paint . . . [Pot] lets me be more creative and more in tune with my kids,” she said.
“Sherry,” a Brooklyn special-ed teacher, said it’s a good thing education officials don’t randomly test for the drug.
“They’d probably have to fire about 85 percent of their staff,” said Sherry, also in her 30s.
Today’s pot puffers insist that they’re no burnouts.
“I’ve got a spring in my step. I’m always moving. I’m very high energy,” said “Zach,” a 30-something TV-station marketing manager who has been smoking weed for the better part of 20 years but, along with others interviewed by The Post, didn’t want his real name used.
A Gallup poll in August found the number of US adults using marijuana has nearly doubled in the past three years, from 7 percent in 2013 to 13 percent in 2016. But all that puffing has health consequences, experts caution. “Marijuana is absolutely harmful and absolutely addictive. The industry is selling a lie that marijuana is more or less harmless,” said Dr. Kevin Sabet, the former senior adviser to the drug czar under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “Philip Morris said that 80 years ago about cigarettes, and this is the new Philip Morris.” Sabet, who heads Smart Approaches to Marijuana, an antipot-legalization group, said dope can seriously harm adults’ motor cognitive and mental skills. But Zach argues his $400-amonth habit actually helps him. “I work anywhere between 60 to 80 hours a week, and I also smoke weed every day, and I’m educated, and I do a good job,’’ he said.
And Melissa said getting high is better than drinking.
“I’m never not aware. I have friends who go to play dates and drink a whole bottle of wine. They’re drunk. I think that’s a lot more dangerous than smoking a quarter of a joint,” she said.
Sherry, who said she tokes after work every day to focus, is more comfortable smoking now it has been decriminalized.
“I feel a little better that it’s a ticketable offense as opposed to an arrestable offense,” she said, adding that she still worries that her bosses will find out. Forget that her fiancé is a cop: “He tells people, ‘ My girlfriend is the most functional pothead you’ve ever met in your life.’ ”