(MintPress) – During his State of the City speech on Thursday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that those arrested in New York City for possession of a small amount of marijuana will no longer be arrested, but instead be issued a ticket.
Scheduled to take effect next month, Bloomberg said that the new measure was part of an effort to keep New Yorkers, particularly young men, from ending up with a criminal record. Bloomberg’s announcement came after Governor Cuomo made a proposal during his State of the State speech to reduce the possession of small amounts of marijuana, under 15 grams, to a violation rather than a misdemeanor.
“The legislature finds that arrests, criminal prosecutions and criminal penalties are inappropriate for people who possess small quantities of marijuana for personal use. Every year, this process needlessly scars thousands of lives and wastes millions of dollars in law enforcement resources, while detracting from the prosecution of serious crime,” Cuomo said.
But unlike Cuomo’s decriminalization proposal, which Bloomberg says could take a year or so to pass through the state legislature and implement, Bloomberg wants his measure in effect as soon as possible.
“Right now, those arrested for possessing small amounts of marijuana are often held in custody overnight. We’re changing that. Effective next month, anyone presenting an ID and clearing a warrant check will be released directly from the precinct with a desk appearance ticket to return to court. It’s consistent with the law, it’s the right thing to do and it will allow us to target police resources where they’re needed most.”
Though Bloomberg is opposed to legalization of marijuana, citing that the drug is stronger than it used to be, Bloomberg says decriminalization needs to happen to “ease congestion in courts and jails.” His position is somewhat surprising yet welcoming given that New York City has one of the highest rates of marijuana arrests in the world, even though New York Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Ray Kelly issued an operations order reminding officers to follow existing New York State law, which states marijuana is a non-arrestable offense unless it’s burning or is in plain public view.
According to the Drug Policy Alliance, Kelly’s order “directed officers to stop falsely charging people for possessing marijuana in public view if individuals removed marijuana from their pocket under the order of a police officer.” But the order failed to address the illegal searches conducted by the NYPD and the racial bias in these arrests.
New York Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries (D, WFP – Brooklyn) is one New York lawmaker considering backing bipartisan legislation to end the crackdown on marijuana, especially when tied to stop-and-frisk searches.
“The recent increase in illegal marijuana arrests, which continue to overwhelmingly and unfairly target black and Latino young men, is deeply disturbing,” he said.
“The continued marijuana arrest explosion is unfair, unjust and unconscionable. It wastes millions of taxpayer dollars and needlessly ruins the lives of tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This strategy does not make us safer, and the administration’s failure to change course means that the state legislature must once again step in to restore sanity. The reform of our marijuana laws should be the legislature’s highest criminal justice priority this year.”
Unnecessary Arrests
According to a report by the Drug Policy Alliance, the NYPD made more marijuana possession arrests in 2011 than in 2010. And under Bloomberg’s leadership from 2007 to 2011, there were more marijuana arrests than in the 24 years from 1978 through 2001 under the leadership of Mayor Giuliani, Mayor Dinkins and Mayor Koch combined.
In 2011, more than 400,000 people were arrested on low-level possession, and of those arrests, nearly 350,000 were young Black and Latino men, despite the fact that young Whites use marijuana at higher rates than young Blacks and Latinos.
“These new numbers go hand in hand with what know to be true in the everyday lives of young people of color in the targeted neighborhoods,” said Kyung Ji Rhee, juvenile justice project director at the Center for NuLeadership. “The number of requests for our know your rights trainings have shot up. Stories of illegal searches, disdainful and racist remarks, not to mention illegal marijuana arrests continue unabated without any accountability.”
This trend in high arrest rates for marijuana possession isn’t unique to just New York. Statistics released by the FBI in 2011 revealed that marijuana arrests in the U.S. exceeded violent crime arrests by more than 100,000.
Marijuana-related arrests in 2011 cost the city more than $75 million, bringing the total for marijuana arrests in the past decade to more than $600 million.
In a press release from the Drug Policy Alliance, possession of small amounts of marijuana has been a violation, a non-arrestable offense since 1977, unless it’s burning or is in plain public view. Meaning in 1977, New York lawmakers decided that “arrests, criminal prosecutions, and criminal penalties are inappropriate for people who possess small of amounts of marihuana (sic) for personal use,” since “every year this process needlessly scars thousands of lives and wastes millions of dollars in law enforcement resources, while detracting from the prosecution of serious crime.”
Even with this law, marijuana possession was the largest arrest category in New York City in 2011. Part of the reason for the increase in marijuana arrests is tied to the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program, which also unfairly targets young Black and Latino men more than any other demographic. This likely explains why Queens College Professor Harry Levine found in his research that the majority of marijuana arrests in New York City are the result of illegal searches and false charges.
A marijuana arrest is not a small matter like a speeding ticket. Since marijuana is classified as a Schedule 1 drug under the reasoning that it has a high potential for abuse, getting arrested for possession is more than just “getting handcuffed, taken to the police station, fingerprinted, photographed (and in some cases, having one’s eyes scanned), detained for hours and sometimes days, and then released with a court date.” An arrest also creates a permanent criminal record that can easily be found on the Internet by employers, landlords, schools, credit agencies, licensing boards and banks.
Time for new legislation
As lawmakers become more aware of the extent marijuana users are criminalized for even the smallest possession, many have begun to introduce laws legalizing marijuana. This past November two states, Colorado and Washington, legalized the use of marijuana for recreational use, and appear to have started a trend.
According to the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), a marijuana legalization advocacy group, there are a record number of statewide marijuana law reform measures pending in 2013, with five states considering legislation to legalize the adult consumption and sale of marijuana, nine states considering legislation to decriminalize minor marijuana possession offenses, and eight states considering legislation to legalize the use of marijuana for therapeutic or medical reasons.
Though federal law still labels the sale of marijuana for medicinal or recreational use as drug trafficking, regardless of the rules of the state, many states are pushing back under the premise that the war on drugs isn’t working and needs to change.
One lawmaker in particular, Colorado Congressman Jared Polis, introduced a bill (HR-499), that seeks to end the federal ban on marijuana and would allow states to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to legalize pot.
Before President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, Polis started an “Ask Me Anything” thread on Reddit where he answered questions about marijuana legalization, among other issues. When asked what his main argument was for legalizing marijuana, Polis responded that “the drug war has failed and it’s time to try a new approach.”
He also highlighted the fact that “all those on the gravy train of the drug war” are law enforcement organizations and private sector vendors.
As Mint Press News previously reported, police unions are at the top of the list for lobby groups against marijuana legalization because as long as marijuana is illegal, police departments are able to collect millions of dollars in federal grants given specifically for cracking down on marijuana use. Defeats to legislation like Proposition 19 allow groups like the California Police Chiefs Association to continue to receive millions of dollars in federal funding each year for their efforts on the War on Drugs programs.
Private for-profit prisons and prison guard unions are also interested in keeping cannabis illegal as catching users leads to hefty profits for the prisons and the drug programs they offer. It’s estimated there are more than 850,000 marijuana-related arrests each year in the U.S., amounting to about one “pot bust” every 37 seconds. Most concerning to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other minority groups, marijuana drug enforcement falls disproportionately on African-Americans and Latinos, even though White people use marijuana at the same rate.
The fact that minorities are targeted more than White people is the reason why organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) have called legalization efforts social-justice issues and endorsed recreational legalization such as Colorado’s Amendment 64.
“We’ve been in the courts, and we’ve been in the streets, and everywhere we find people arrested for marijuana possession as a result of an illegal search and false charges,” said gabriel sayegh, New York state director of the Drug Policy Alliance. “These bogus arrests continue in spite of the current law and despite Commissioner Kelly’s operations order. Given the extraordinary degree of police lawlessness and racial bias marking these arrests, it’s time for Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the U.S. Justice Department to open up investigations into these practices, in the City and around the state. New Yorkers have had enough.”
Marijuana law reform: Not just for stoners
Though marijuana as a topic is still taboo, more and more of the general population appears to be in favor of legalization once discovering just how much of a burden arrests for possessing a small amount of marijuana have had on our legal system.
Largely because of the drug war, the U.S. prison population is six to ten times as high as most Western European nations. In 2006 alone, NORML reported that more than 829,000 people were arrested in the U.S. for marijuana-related offenses, bringing the U.S. to be a close second to Russia in its rate of incarceration per 100,000 people.
But legalization advocates like NORML said the amount of support for the legislation and the fact that there even was such legislation is a sign of progress.
In a recent interview with Mint Press News, Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML, said once legalization becomes politically viable and salient, meaning once legalization is favored by at least 60 percent of the public nationally, then marijuana reform will happen in the U.S.
According to a Gallup poll, support for federal legalization crossed the 50 percent threshold last November, which St. Pierre says is right on track for an expected legalization victory in 2020 or 2021.