50,000 New Yorkers Arrested in 2011 For Pot Possession

Yes, you have read that statistic correctly.  The actual number of arrests for possessing under 25 grams of marijuana is 50,684 and it is up from the previous year by .6 percent. In fact, that number is more than all the arrests for marijuana possession the city made in the years between 1978 and 1996....combined.

The TIMES metro section reports on this suprising statistic today, revealing that these misdemeanor arrests cost the city an estimated $75 million dollars. In these tight budgetary times, there are certainly many useful things this money could be spent on.  It's very similar to the time/money the city wasted on harassing the Occupy protestors last year.  What is more alarming about these arrests is that the majority of them, 87% in fact, are for black or hispanics while studies consistently show that marijuana use/possession is much higher with whites.

I am usually not one to get rabble-roused but this situation truly bothers me because it's about more than drugs, it's about basic American rights (against illegal searches, for equal justice) that are being violated in New York every day for the so-called greater good. I can only hope this becomes an issue in the upcoming mayoral campaign as it's a discussion about safety vs. sanity that is long overdue in this city.

Not The High Turnout They Were Hoping For

In the flood of election news about the Republican wave, there is one little loss that is worth noting. In California, voters rejected Proposition 19 which would have make recreational use of marijuana legal.  One would think that, since the state legalized medical marijuana successfully a few years back, this one would have passed easily.  But apparently the youth vote did not turn out and the measured was defeated by double digits.  The only area where voters were in favor of it was the Bay Area, but only by a slim margin.

The Wednesday morning quarterbacking on this story is that just having it on the ballot was a watershed moment.  I'd have to say that's true.  For years, stoners have joked about making marijuana legal and here was a state, the largest in the nation, seriously considering doing just that.  While lower voter turnout contributed to the loss, there was also the prickly problem of the fact that marijuana would have remained illegal at the federal level.  The legal morass this would have created was probably a turn-off to most law-abiding citizens.

Well, maybe like Prop 8 in 2008, this is only the beginning of an inevitable march toward legalization.  Given the amount of income it could generate from taxes, it could be increasingly hard to resist as state and federal deficits continue to grow.