When it comes to progressive laws in the United States it is axiomatic that as California goes, so goes the nation. This was the case when it legalized marijuana for medicinal use in 1996. (Seventeen states, including Washington, DC, have followed suit.)
Therefore, it is very noteworthy that New York is assuming this vanguard role in decriminalizing possession of marijuana for personal use (i.e., not necessarily for medicinal use).
This proposal will bring long overdue consistency and fairness to New York State’s Penal Law and save thousands of New Yorkers, particularly minority youth, from the unnecessary and life-altering trauma of a criminal arrest, and, in some cases, prosecution.
This is how a spokesman for New York Governor Andrew Cuomo framed this progressive bill during an interview with The Times yesterday. Significantly, it gained immediate traction when the very progressive mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, joined with the very aggressive police commissioner, Ray Kelly, to endorse it.
Conspicuously, though, none of them mentioned how much the state’s budget will benefit from decriminalizing possession of even the relatively small amounts at issue, namely, 25 grams (or 7/8 of an ounce). Not to mention the benefit to Blacks and Hispanics who comprise the vast majority of those routinely prosecuted and incarcerated for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
There are more arrests for low-level pot possession in New York City – about 50,000 a year – than any other crime, accounting for about one of every seven cases that turn up in criminal courts [and] most are Black and Latino…
(Associated Press, November 5 2011)
But now that deficit reduction has become de rigueur from Sacramento to Albany, the cost of prosecuting and incarcerating low-level criminals has finally become untenable:
Seeing as how marijuana possession is the number one reason for arrest in New York City, it may come as no surprise that New York City taxpayers spent 75 million dollars last year (2010) to put pot-smokers behind bars.
(Huff Post, May 25, 2011)
Therefore it seems more than a little disingenuous for Cuomo and others to act as if legal fairness, not budget savings, is behind this proposal.
All the same, as one who has been advocating for the decriminalization not just of marijuana but of all drugs, I welcome this second baby step along this progressive road (legalizing medicinal use being the first). I only hope that, in this case, as New York goes, so goes the nation.
[T]alk of Obama deploying U.S. troops to the Mexican-U.S. border is hysterical nonsense… I regret that Obama’s enlightenment … does not extend to doing the only thing that will guarantee victory in this war on drugs: legalize drugs!
(“Mexico-U.S. Relationship is all about Supply and Demand … of Cheap Labor and Drugs,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 31, 2009)
NOTE: There can be no more compelling reason for either decriminalizing marijuana or criminalizing alcohol than statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which show that 37,000 annual deaths are attributed to alcohol; whereas those attributed to marijuana are so few the CDC does not even maintain a category for them.
Related commentaries:
Mexico-U.S. relationship is all about supply and demand
Legalize drugs
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