Last week, news reports excoriated the New York Police Department when it attempted to defend its clearly racially biased practices of arresting people of color for marijuana-related offenses. On Monday, Mayor Bill de Blasio officially instructed the NYPD to stop arresting people for using marijuana in public and instead hand out summons. In an interview with NY1, Mayor de Blasio explained his position as a step toward the inevitable legalization of marijuana in New York state.
We have to end racial disparity. But we also want to drive down the number of arrests, overall …
I don’t want to see young people saddled with an arrest record. Too many people, particularly young men of color, have been suffering that reality …
Asked about his position on legalization of marijuana in New York changing over the past few weeks—the result of Cynthia Nixon charging into the Democratic gubernatorial primary—de Blasio danced around it a bit.
Early on in the administration we ended arrests for low-level possession of marijuana, and I’m very proud of that, it was a step in the right direction. But what we’ve seen—based on a lot of statistics—now, is that we still had more arrests overall for marijuana than we wanted and we still had a disparity we didn’t want. It’s why we have to keep making steps, regardless of what the state does. [...]
For New York I think it is inevitable. I can’t say that for the whole country but for New York I think it is. We have to get ahead of that.
The times they are a changin’.