The topic is not really marijuana. Mankind has been consuming marijuana for at least 4,000 years, with no problems. The issue is the monstrously destructive, marijuana prohibition. It was FRAUDULENTLY enacted in 1937 by soon-to-be-out-of-work alcohol prohibition bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger. He desperately wanted a new empire and no lie was too big to tell to get it.
Science and widespread experience have shown marijuana is not addictive and has no significant harms. - Polls show public support for ending prohibition is at 65 percent - and climbing!
In all it's miserable 82 years, the fraudulently enacted, marijuana prohibition has never accomplished one positive thing. It has ONLY caused vast amounts of crime, violence, corruption, death and the severe diminishing of everyone's freedom.
We have 11 completely legal states and 35 medical marijuana states, so far. It's clear we are ending the fraudulent, marijuana prohibition, just as we ended the misguided alcohol prohibition.
The only thing that is delaying this justice is corrupt politicians who are thwarting the will of the people.
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Exactly where are they getting this marijuana they are being caught with? The other states where it’s legal? Grow up
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@Andre
Do you mean grow up and re-legalize marijuana? -- Or grow up and stop smoking marijuana?
If it's the later, that's an absurd thing to say. - Science and widespread experience have shown marijuana has no significant harms.
Every person who chooses near harmless marijuana over addictive, very harmful alcohol, improves their health tremendously - as well as the lives of their family and community.
Exactly what color are we talking about? White yellow or brown?
I've never really smoked marijuana. At a couple of college parties, to use Bill Clinton's phrase, I "smoked but did not inhale." As a Black person, I was afraid of getting arrested and ruining my future. I also needed to take care of whatever brain cells I had. I laughed at Reefer Madness like everyone else, but the questions remained.
Over the years, I've read that marijuana's dangers have been exaggerated. I'm glad that it is being decriminalized and one day may be legal in New York. I do worry, however, about the increasingly potent quality of the new varieties. I will try some edibles, but will proceed with caution.
It smells much better than tobacco, but I am a bit tired of walking into clouds of mj smoke without warning when I step out on the street.
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The trick is also not inhaling what others are smoking!
tune of "Second Hand Rose" (update for the current law)
We're getting second-hand smoke
And it's no joke
I can't avoid a second-hand toke.
Even in the gym while in the sauna
We're stuck taking in their marijuana
Yom Kippur, when we atoned
We got "second-hand stoned"
We tried hard not to breathe and we turned blue.
Even at the office, when it gets in our lungs
Since it's not illegal, we are told "Hold your tongues"
So unless someone dies.
From someone’s second-hand highs.
No second thoughts - what's new?
@Freddie
The country's leading researcher of marijuana and lung disease, UCLA's Dr. Donald Tashkin, conducted investigations over 30 years, initially believing there must be a causal relationship. But he finally concluded that smoking marijuana does NOT cause cancer or ANY other serious disease.
Tashkin said: "We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use. What we found instead was no association at all, and even some suggestion of a protective effect."
It is almost impossible to get a "second-hand" high. The great majority of THC is absorbed by the first-hand smoker's lungs. - The tiny fraction remaining is immediately dispersed and diluted by the atmosphere.
The only way to get a second-hand high is if you are in a small enclosed space, like a car or shut closet, with two or three people smoking heavily.
@Lifelong Reader
Science and widespread experience have shown marijuana has no significant harms.
We have always had very potent marijuana. In the Sixties and Seventies, it was called hash. - More potent marijuana is actually healthier because you smoke less of it to get the same effect.
You should consider vaporizing crushed, whole flowers. This method has all of the benefits of smoking - but without the smoke.
Just a quick note to say that it’s “Nicole Dennis-Benn” not “Dennish”! Thanksh!
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This effort is politically motivated and a smokescreen. In a state of 19 million people, a mere 10-12 thousand will have their records expunged, wow that is really impressive, its not. This fact means that the rest of the people probably people of color have convictions that are for crimes more severe. Let's face it, this is not a color issue, it's a social irresponsibility issue. Families of all backgrounds need to teach their children that drugs are bad for our health when used in excess. Selling drugs should be a crime where the threshold is now set is reasonable but it doesn't solve any problems for "people of color" as the liberal politicians profess
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@Tony
Selling and possessing illegal drugs is bad. We can agree on that. But when people of color are prosecuted at much higher levels than whites for the same offenses that certainly is a problem for people of color and is fundamentally unfair. Moreover, this country has a history of assigning higher penalties for crimes involving drugs favored by African Americans, most recently, crack cocaine v. cocaine.
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People who are clearly not “dealing” but just small end users or addicted, should not be arrested. They should be offered treatment.
But in many cases the addiction leads to dealing and theft in order to pay for the addiction. This is where i am conflicted and the line must be drawn. For some people, incarceration is the only way for them to stop using drugs. It is very sad.
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@Bret
Addiction involves withdrawal symptoms that are so severe, they compel continuous use to be avoided. - Marijuana doesn't have them so is NOT addictive. That's one of the many things consumers like about it.
NYC news (though not mentioned here) - apparently the Paris movie theater has closed.
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Marijuana: The smell of today's stuff ought to be illegal; it's vile and disgusting in the extreme.
AND it's air pollution for everyone nearby. I don't see how it's any different an issue than cigarette smoke ... neither type of smoke is good for anyone's lungs.
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So do you think people should be locked up for smoking cigarettes? In a free society and in New York City you need to be able to tolerate other people’s habits that don’t directly harm you.
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Marijuana is not linked to emphezyma, cancer, smoke stains, and eyes problems and the vast majority of serious smoke related effects.
Harmless no, but serious, less than any other legal intoxicant. Less serious than any prescription drug people get high off of.
Marijuana us a fender-bender when tobacco and alcohol are a high speed front end collisions.
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@John Dawson
How do you know that: "Marijuana is not linked to emphezyma, cancer, smoke stains, and eyes problems and the vast majority of serious smoke related effects."
Who said so? It's my opinion that it's best not to put smoke of any kind in your lungs. It can cause COPD among other things. Do you know what COPD is? It means you can't breathe. Think about your future before you inhale any smoke. And by the way, howi s it possible to smoke "without inhaling"? That is a laugh. How do you get smoke in your system without inhaling?
I’m out and about my neighborhood and it amazes me how many young people are getting high early in the morning and throughout the day.
So the Pols have been de-criminalizing the use of marijuana but have done little to inform these folks of the downside of its use.
I have been told by some of these folks that they work better when high! Truly Amazing for them to believe this.
Look at statistics in Colorado regarding the legalization of marijuana and you’ll find they aren’t all positive.
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@Toby Finn
Science and widespread experience have shown marijuana is not addictive and has no significant harms.
The DEA's own administrative law judge, Francis Young, concluded after an exhaustive review of the evidence:
"Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man."
You have likely seen propaganda and junk science pushed by prohibitionists. Check your sources.
Where does New York stand in marijuana?
Here's where I stand: When I'm walking behind someone smoking a joint, or I have to walk past one or two or four guys smoking joints, or I'm in traffic on the BQE and find myself idling next to a driver smoking a joint, or I'm trying to sleep and there are guys below my window smoking joints, I get a pain in my sinuses and my eyes start to water. Marijuana has a rotten smell and, worse, I react badly to whatever is in it.
I think about similarly affected people who live in apartments, where the smoke permeates through radiator, plumbing, and baseboard gaps.
Many commenters will say they smoked all through college and have their Ph.Ds. Good for them. In my neighborhood, where young men smoke at 8am presumably on their way to school, or to their corner, or at 12:30 in the afternoon on their lunch hours -- or whatever 12:30 means anymore -- that's not going to happen.
If pot is merely like alcohol, then we have serious alcoholics everywhere.
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@B.
I avoid going into the city due to the smell of cars, buses , trucks and incinerators. Cigarette smoke has an even worse effect. I avoid the city like the plague that it is. If you are suffering as badly as you say, maybe you should consider leaving the city. These odors are not going away anytime soon.
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Thanks, no. I was born here 65 years ago and lived here all my life.
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Alcohol is massively more harmful than marijuana and yes we do gave alcohol. Most people either drink to excess or almost not at all. The moderate drinker is a white rhino
It is good to see people free to make their own decisions on smoking weed, gambling etc. I don't partake in either, and personally see both as potentially destructive, but that is a personal opinion. It is surely a positive in that adults are finally free to make their own life choices.
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@Billy from Brooklyn You forgot to add "in New York and some other places". It's not all people, especially since in much of the U.S. women are not permitted to control their own bodies, and in much of the world people are not permitted to live in the gender they are.
After so many years, what this article describes is a positive beginning.
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@Joan
True. However IMHO, in the near future the individual states, which now often have completely different beliefs and regulations, will become more like the EU then United States. There is no way that all 50 states will be able to have similar laws on abortion, guns, immigration, taxation, the environment etc. The only way we will be able to stay together as a nation will be thru a confederation, where individual state rights are expanded. We no longer have more in common then we have differences.
But Billy, a confederation would not have been able to win the Second World War.