Mayor Will Tell NYPD To Halt Public Pot Smoking Arrests

NEW YORK, NY — Mayor Bill de Blasio will tell the NYPD to stop making arrests for public marijuana smoking as officials work to trim racial disparities in how drug laws are enforced. The mayor plans to direct the Police Department to give out summonses to people caught lighting up in public instead of cuffing them.

The move, first reported by the New York Daily News, comes as the NYPD takes up a 30-day review of how it enforces marijuana laws in the city and state officials consider legalizing the drug altogether.

The NYPD will come up with a plan to implement the policy shift, which is not imminent, a City Hall spokesman said.

While he still has qualms about full legalization, de Blasio now thinks it's inevitable and will create a task force to prepare the city for it. The group will consider zoning for dispensaries, approaches to public smoking and public health efforts around marijuana, according to the Daily News.

"With marijuana legalization likely to occur in our state in the near future, it is critical our city plans for the public safety, health, and financial consequences involved," the Democratic mayor said in a statement.

"While I still have real concerns we must work through, it isn’t difficult to see where this is headed and any responsible policymaker must prepare for that eventuality. My focus now will be helping to craft the critical regulatory framework that must come before legalization is realized."

The NYPD has issued summonses for possession of small amounts of marijuana since 2014 but continued to make arrests for smoking it in public.

City Council Speaker Corey Johnson and the Rev. Al Sharpton pitched replacing arrests for public smoking with summonses as a way to lighten the burden of drug laws on black and Hispanic communities. Those two ethnic groups accounted for 86 percent of the city's marijuana arrests last year.

The change to NYPD policy comes as Gov. Andrew Cuomo prepares to release the results of a study on marijuana legalization in New York. The governor has not fully backed legalization but commissioned the study earlier this year to examine its potential impacts.

The Brooklyn and Manhattan district attorneys also moved last week to reduce prosecutions for smoking marijuana in public.

De Blasio has opposed making marijuana legal even as progressives around the country have come to support it. Nine states have legalized the drug for recreational use and Phil Murphy, New Jersey's new Democratic governor, is reportedly pushing for legalization in his state.

Last week, the mayor said he worries about a big marijuana industry growing out of legalization and "trying to hook as many young people as possible on marijuana for the profit of those companies."

"If we were really trying to put things in order, we would say we need to address those issues up front and not make the mistakes we made with tobacco, for example," de Blasio said on WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show."

Advocates and lawmakers praised the mayor for shifting from arrests to summonses for smoking marijuana in public. But some said the city still has to ensure racial disparities in enforcement don't continue and that prior arrests don't harm New Yorkers' rights.

"With the City finally acknowledging that enforcing marijuana prohibition is futile, and pressure from advocates to address the legacy of racial disparities from enforcement, it is the City’s duty to systematically address the harms and collateral consequences of past marijuana arrests," Kassandra Frederique, the New York State director of the Drug Policy Alliance, and Alyssa Aguilera, the co-executive director of VOCAL-NY, said in a joint statement.

(Lead image: Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at an event on May 17, 2018. Photo by Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)