The criminalization of marijuana: stupid
Until Wednesday, there were two rules for avoiding an arrest for marijuana possession in Albany.
Rule No. 1: Don’t sell or smoke pot, or carry it for a friend.
Rule No. 2: Be white. The second rule wasn’t easy for about half the population, of course. But it reflected the ugly reality in a city, like many others around the country, where nearly everyone arrested for marijuana possession was Black.
That racial disparity, which didn’t reflect the actual demographics of pot use, is not the only reason to celebrate that recreational marijuana became legal in New York on Wednesday, but it’s a good one. The connection between the war on drugs and the devastating effects of mass incarceration has been obvious for decades.
Here’s another reason to celebrate: Marijuana criminalization was stupid.
Sorry if that sounds blunt, but stupid seems the right word for state policies that accepted and profited on the widespread sale and use of alcohol but threw people in prison for smoking a plant with, often, a milder effect.
What, really, was the point? What did the ban accomplish?
“We are wasting lives, we are wasting generations of lives, we are wasting law enforcement budgets, we are wasting court budgets,” Sen. Liz Kruger, a Democrat from Manhattan and sponsor of the legislation, said during debate on the bill. “Let them go out and deal with real criminals and real crime.”
The possession of up to three ounces of marijuana is now legal as New York becomes the 15th state to allow the use and sale of recreational cannabis. The state will raise many millions in tax revenue as a
result, of course, and much of the money is supposed to be spent on improving poorer neighborhoods hurt most by the drug war.
How, exactly? Well, that remains to be seen, and it wouldn’t be surprising if New York lawmakers waste the opportunity. But the spending could have a meaningful impact on Albany, Schenectady and Troy.
Also significant: Many New Yorkers with marijuana-related convictions will have their records automatically expunged — for some, a life-changing and door-opening change.
Still, Republican lawmakers (along with a few skeptical Democrats) raised questions about whether New Yorkers with criminal records would get licenses to sell marijuana, about liability for serving to people younger than 21, about police enforcement of impaired driving laws. They fretted about possible increases in traffic fatalities and addiction struggles.
Some of the concerns are valid, but they apply just as well to beer and alcohol. Is anyone in the
Legislature advocating for a return to liquor prohibition? Then why apply a different standard to marijuana?
In the end, not one Republican in the Assembly or Senate voted for marijuana legalization. Somebody will have to explain how a party that has staked out libertarian positions on coronavirus restrictions and highcapacity weaponry is willing to accept state intrusion into our lives for something as unthreatening as pot use. What am I missing?
I say that, by the way, as someone who will probably never patronize the marijuana bars and stores that will pepper the landscape in about 18 months, once complex regulatory schemes are established. Pot isn’t something I’ve ever enjoyed, but I say “probably” because, well, you just never know.
Quick story: I have two relatives — a husband and wife, and, for whatever it’s worth, big supporters of Donald Trump — who began seeking out recreational marijuana when he developed a rare illness and found it was one of
the few things that helped with his nausea. She began ingesting cannabis because it helped with the stress of living with a patient. (That’s what she claims, anyway.)
Ideally, a medical marijuana program would have helped them. But in New York, medical marijuana never flourished as it should, weighed down, as it was, by cumbersome and impractical restrictions.
The fault for that rests largely with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has long
been uptight about marijuana. When reporter Jimmy Vielkind, then with Politico and now of the Wall Street Journal, memorably asked the governor why he was “kind of a stick in the mud” about recreational pot, Cuomo declared that it was a gateway drug.
Four years later, the Democrat is touting his signature on the legalization as an historic social justice achievement “that rights the wrongs of the past by putting an end to harsh prison sentences”
and promises to boost the economy. He claims the legislation was one of his top priorities.
Don’t be fooled. Unlike with the passage of gay marriage, for which the governor genuinely deserved credit, marijuana legalization is happening in spite of Cuomo, not because of him. With big Democratic majorities in the Assembly and Senate, he was powerless to stop it.
The governor couldn’t beat legalization supporters, so he joined them.