Marijuana was decriminalized in New York in 1977, making possession of anything less than 25 grams only a violation with a $100 fine. Smoking or possession in public, however, is a misdemeanor. If caught holding or smoking in public, you can get up to three months in jail.

If this is the case, why has New York City been the ‘Pot Bust Capital’ of the world for the past 10 years? According to an article I read on AlterNet by Steven Wishnia, police and crackdown defenders are giving a few reasons:

• · Making large numbers of arrests for minor offenses has reduced major crimes
• · It’s an easy way for police supervisors to show their precincts’ productivity
• · It’s an easy way for individual officers to get overtime
• · It keeps a reserve of officers occupied

Almost 400 thousand people were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession in the past ten years, and a new study sponsored by the New York Civil Liberties Union says the crackdown is both racist and fraudulent:

• · Five out of six of the people arrested were black or Latino.
• · Nine out of ten were male.
• · Most were under the age of 25.

An estimated two-thirds to three-quarters of the people arrested were not even smoking the marijuana! They usually had it well concealed inside their clothing. Why are they still getting arrested? They are victims of police scams. Police officers stop people near suspected dealing spots and tell them that they saw them coming out; if they give up what they’ve got, all they’ll get is a ticket. If they fall for it and hand over the marijuana, they’re charged with possession of marijuana open to public view.

According to Wishnia, this is all thanks to Rudolph Giuliani’s decision to make public toking a top police priority. Though Giuliani’s not in office anymore, new Mayor Michael Bloomberg is continuing with his legacy. And hypocritically, I might add: When asked if he’d ever smoked pot, Bloomberg declared, “You bet I did — and I enjoyed it!”

This war on drugs needs to end! Deborah Peterson-Small, one of the authors of the NYCLU study, states that it violates the spirit of the state’s decriminalization law: “The ban on public smoking was originally intended to apply only to people creating a public nuisance, not to someone lighting up discreetly in the alley behind a jazz club.”

This Wednesday (April 30) in New York City, The New York City Bar Association will be hosting a lecture called “New York City’s Marijuana Arrest Policy: Thirty Years After Decriminalization”. The lecture, based on research by Professor Harry Levine (Queens College), Deborah Small (head of Breaking the Chains), and Bruce D. Johnson (Ph.D), will discuss and review law enforcement patterns, alternative policing practices, and targeting cannabis consumers.

The research was previously submitted as testimony to the New York State senate, where they focused on law enforcement practices in New York City, revealing that Marijuana Possession arrests have risen from 39-thousand to 362-thousand in the past ten years. This testimony was also presented at the 2007 NORML Conference in Los Angeles.

I wish I was able to make it into the city this week to attend the lecture, but unfortunately I’ve got prior obligations to attend to. If you’ll be in the New York City area this Wednesday, I encourage you to attend! It starts at 6:30PM and the address is as follows:

The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036.

If you’re like me and unable to attend the lecture, you can view the research in PDF format here.