New York Weed Mess: People of color busted for possession, while illegal sales are rampant and ignored by cops.

It’s almost like drug laws exist as a pretext to bust poor people of color?

Our space overlord and troll Elon Musk has weighed in on the Biden’s administration’s efforts to help Britney Griner, who was sentenced to 9 years in prison in Russia after getting caught with a tiny about of weed vape.

“There are people in jail in America for the same stuff. Shouldn’t we free them too? My opinion is that people should not be in jail for non-violent drug crimes.”

Thanks for your opinion. Actually, the focus on non-violent drug crimes is precisely what allows Democratic lawmakers to wiggle out of any kind of major clemency, at both the federal and state levels. Relatively few people that fit the legal definition of a nonviolent drug offender are serving years in prison. The common sense definition, yes: there are people serving years for drugs who pose no danger to society. But politicians are not about “common sense” as advertised, but rather power hunger psychos. So, in legalese, the 70-year-old with zero chance of committing any crime, much less a violent one, is not, per se, a ‘non-violent’ offender, because she’s probably in prison due to habitual offender (three strikes) laws or conspiracy charges, which allow prosecutors to pin low level dealers with all the drugs and crimes committed by all the members of an operation over the years it operated.

Anyway, Musk is an idiot and I wish Americans weren’t so worshipful of obscene wealth but here we are. What struck me about the breathless New York Post story about his statement was this part: “Marijuana possession is still illegal at the federal level, fully legalized for recreational use in 19 states and decriminalized in 18 others. New York is one of those states. Virtually every public resource and news story suggests that possession for recreational use is legal.

But as we exclusively reported earlier, after a sharp dip in marijuana arrests following legalization in New York in the first quarter of 2021, arrests for possession slowly crept up. Almost a hundred people have been arrested for possession alone—and only three were white. Nearly 40 were issued summonses.

The arrests mostly fell under a statute that criminalizes quantity. The bulk of these arrests were for criminal possession in the 3rd degree, or the smallest criminal amount, which is up to 16 ounces. These rules and distinctions might be confusing to the general population, to say the least: there was virtually no news coverage alerting residents that there were limits on possession. In an explainer, the New York Times mentioned, in passing, that there are penalties for large amounts or illegal sales; but then added that people are allowed to store up to 5 pounds in their home, which is more than the amount that might trigger the class E felony or misdemeanor. 

According to arraignment data, almost all of the charges were dismissed. Sounds OK, right? I mean no. Even a day in jail means missed work. What about the trauma of getting cuffed and dragged to jail? Or the fact that as nearly every violent crime has spiked in the city, cops are spending even a minute busting anyone for weed under a statute that, apparently, no one knows about but the NYPD? Etc.

In addition to the near total lack of coverage, you might forgive people for their confusion. Even though sales are technically still illegal, you can walk into bodegas and smoke shops all over the city and buy enough weed gummies to see God.

But cops aren’t going to bust the neighborhood bodega guy that makes their favorite sandwhich (this, to be clear, is good! All hail bodegas, haters).

When some enterprising bodega owners starting selling the noxious K-2 around 2015, it turned swaths of Bushwick into a very foul smelling horror movie, as people who couldn’t access weed due to prohibition started smoking K-2, which smells like 100 trash fires and might make someone fall asleep—or act terrifyingly psychotic, based on the randomness of the batchs’ potency and contents.

No arrests for selling K-2 by business appear to have been made.

Hilariously, one of the bodegas at the epicenter of the K-2 has a sandwich named “The NYPD.” There were always cops in there slugging the crappy coffee and ordering food. I can’t be totally sure, but I heard that they introduced The NYPD to repair their relationship to the authorities after they were caught selling K-2.

When we posted the first story, people were shocked. Again, there are stores all over the city where you can buy weed products, even though it’s illegal to sell weed. The clerks give a spiel about which are good for going to sleep, which are good for fun. It’s not a secret. I don’t even like weed and I know this.

It does, however, appear to be a secret that people of color — again, of the 137 people arrested or summoned for possession, only three were white — are still being arrested for a literal not-crime.

It’s almost like drug laws exist as a pretext to bust poor people of color?