They paid for using weed, but now it’s no longer criminal

One man lost his livelihood. The other lost a month of his youth.

The offenses that those New York City men paid a price for are no longer crimes.

Victor Herrera was driving in Queens in 2010 when he was pulled over by NYPD officers who smelled marijuana in his car and searched it. The cops found a couple of joints.

Herrera, 54, a truck driver who admitted he used the marijuana recreationally, was arrested and sent to Queens Central Booking, where he waited about a day before seeing a judge and getting released.

He pleaded guilty to a violation — an offense that ranks below a misdemeanor. Under New York law, violations technically are not deemed a crime. They seldom result in any jail time, and can’t bring in fines greater than $250.

Though the legal penalty was light, Herrera’s guilty plea cost him plenty. He lost his tow truck license, shutting him out of his career.

With Wednesday’s legalization of pot in New

York, the NYPD is changing the criteria for car stops. They can no longer use the scent of marijuana as a reason to search a car.

“It’s a major break for many of the young and youth that are basically targeted by the NYPD for driving while Black and Hispanic,” said Herrera. “Being pulled over under a pretext and utilizing these aromas to engage in unnecessary searches of vehicles ...

This kind of eliminates that confrontation.”

Alfredo Carrasquillo, 37, a union rep for hospital workers, said he was arrested repeatedly in the late 1990s and early 2000s for having small amounts of pot when he was stopped-and-frisked in the South Bronx.

Cops would approach him and tell him to empty his pockets, where he often kept a nickel or dime bag of marijuana that he smoked recreationally.

Usually, he’d be released at arraignment after spending the night in lock up.

But one pot possession bust sent Carrasquillo (below) to juvenile detention for a month when he was a teenager. Finally, he gave up the wacky tabacky after one-too-many run-ins with law enforcement. “Because of all the arrests and bulls—t, my wife forced me to quit,” he said.

“I never thought it would ever be legalized,” Carrasquillo said. “Being just a recreational smoker, I had a choice — quit right now or find myself in that same situation.”

Now he said he may “dibble or dabble” in legal marijuana.

Herrera and Carrasquillo didn’t do any state prison time for their pot arrests.

But New York prisons now hold 19 people whose top charge is criminal sale of marijuana or criminal possession of marijuana, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision,