New York’s Illegal Pot Crackdown

Thirty-five years ago, New York’s legislature
decriminalized marijuana possession. Numbers released last week

show the New York Police Department continues to flagrantly
flout that policy, wasting resources on a pointless, unjust, and
illegal crusade against pot smokers.

Under the Marijuana Reform Act of 1977, possessing up to 25
grams of cannabis (about nine-tenths of an ounce) is a citable
offense similar to a traffic violation, punishable by a
maximum fine of $100. But if the marijuana is “burning or open to
public view,” that’s a Class B
misdemeanor, punishable but up to three months in jail. An
officer who uses intimidation or coercion to convert the former
offense into the latter, thereby providing a pretext for an arrest,
is breaking the law.

Don’t take my word for it. In a
directive issued last September, New York Police Commissioner
Raymond Kelly reminded the city’s cops that “the public display of
marihuana must be an activity undertaken of the subject’s own
volition.” He said the charge is not legally appropriate “if the
marihuana recovered was disclosed to public view at an officer’s
discretion.”

Why did Kelly think it was necessary to remind his officers that
they are supposed to follow the law? He was responding to
complaints that police in New York manufacture misdemeanors by
instructing people they stop to take out any contraband they might
have or by searching them (ostensibly for weapons) and pulling out
a joint or a bag of pot.

Such tricks help explain why pot busts have skyrocketed in New
York City during the last decade and a half, even while marijuana
use (as measured by government-sponsored
surveys) has remained about the same. From 1997 through 2011,
according to figures compiled by Queens
College sociologist Harry Levine, the number of low-level marijuana
arrests averaged about 39,000 a year, 14 times the average for the
previous 15 years.

Based on interviews with “veteran New York City legal aid and
public defender attorneys and supervisors from Manhattan, Brooklyn
and the Bronx,” Levine
estimates that “two-thirds

You can read the rest of this article at: http://reason.com/archives/2012/02/08/new-yorks-illegal-pot-crackdown

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Posted by rbutler on Feb 8 2012. Filed under Libertarian News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry