NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced new legislation to decriminalize public possession of small amounts of marijuana, lowering the penalty from a misdemeanor to a non-criminal offense.Read the rest here.
The measure - which strikes indirectly at the New York Police Department's controversial stop and frisk program - seeks to eliminate a nuance in state law that differentiates between public and private possession of the drug.
At present, first time offenders who are found to be carrying less than 25 grams of marijuana on their person are supposed to be issued a non-criminal violation ticket, similar to a traffic ticket, while those observed to be openly displaying a small amount of the drug - in an upturned palm, for instance - are often arrested on a misdemeanor criminal charge.
But critics of the NYPD's stop and frisk program say minority residents in high-crime areas are routinely arrested and charged criminally, following stops and searches by police that turn up small amounts of the drug in their pockets.
Those arrest records can turn up in background searches by landlords, employees and colleges, drug policy analysts said.
This would basically turn pot possession into the legal equivalent of a parking ticket.
2 comments:
How are you going to legalize weed and outlaw big gulps? That's the functional equivalent of legalizing rockets and outlawing rocket fuel!
(bah..dum..bum..)
"Those arrest records can turn up in background searches by landlords, employees and colleges, drug policy analysts said."
Having been both a landlord and an employer, this strikes me as a feature, not a bug.
Bill, tGf
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