Free Joints For Vaccinated NYers Outside Schumer's Home

NEW YORK CITY — Prospect Park isn't the only place to head for trees this weekend. Free marijuana joints will be given out Sunday at noon to all who want to light up, but only if you have already been dosed — by the COVID-19 vaccine, that is.

The event is the fourth "Joints For Jabs," a program sponsored by ACT UP, NORML, Housing Works and Rise and Resist and other healthcare and drug policy advocates. The most recent Joints for Jabs gave away a whopping 1,400 joints after the Queer Liberation March in June.

Healthcare and AIDS activists are joining forces with marijuana activists to press Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to include marijuana in the $3.5 trillion stimulus package currently being debated in Washington, D.C.

“For the past few weeks, we’ve heard every issue and topic discussed as a potential part of the stimulus package except marijuana,” ACT UP member Brandon Cuicchi said. “It shows that Republican and Democrat lawmakers are out of touch with patients and others who use marijuana medicinally, like people with HIV and AIDS and other long-term conditions.”

Some activists think that marijuana decriminalization and legalization should be included in the budget, and proffered this as a way to boost a more progressive healthcare system.

“Decriminalizing marijuana nationwide would begin to repair the damage done by fifty years of a failed drug war,” Dana Beal, another ACT UP member and longtime marijuana activist, said. “Marijuana legalization can provide its own stimulus to the economy while establishing a funding stream for long-overdue universal healthcare in the United States.”

Meet outside Schumer's Brooklyn joint at 9 Prospect Park West. The event goes until 4:20 p.m. (no, seriously), or at least until all joints are passed out. You must be 21 years or older and show proof of vaccination.

Here's the Facebook event blasting this Sunday's shenanigans.